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"Should Have Known" Standard Applied to CDA Statute of Limitations

Client Alert | 1 min read | 02.28.13

In what seems likely to be a major landmark in the evolving interpretation of the CDA statute of limitations, the ASBCA has held that the statute began to run in 1999, when a DCMA price analyst had all the information the government needed to recognize that it had a claim for an alleged CAS violation, even though the responsible CO may not have been aware of the claim until an audit report was issued in 2006. The ASBCA held that, in the absence of any evidence of trickery or concealment, the government "should have known" that it had a claim based on the contractor's 1999 cost proposal that appeared to be inconsistent with its disclosed accounting practice and that the government could not unilaterally extend the statute of limitations by failing to perform an audit that put the CO on actual notice that there might be a claim.


Insights

Client Alert | 3 min read | 06.12.26

DOJ Guidance Backs Away From Disparate Impact Liability

On June 9, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a formal opinion concluding that the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission’s (EEOC) existing interpretations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) disparate-impact liability, including the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP), are unconstitutional. According to the opinion, EEOC’s prior interpretations contemplate liability based on disproportionately adverse effects alone, without regard to an employer’s likely intent, rather than treating disparate impact as an evidentiary mechanism to “smoke out” intentional discrimination. DOJ found that this approach functions as a “qualified racial-proportionality mandate” that places “a racial thumb on the scales, often requiring employers to evaluate the racial outcomes of their policies, and to make decisions based on (because of) those racial outcomes.” The opinion fulfills one mandate of Executive Order 14281, which rejected disparate-impact liability insofar as it “creates a near insurmountable presumption that unlawful discrimination exists wherever there are any differences in outcomes among different [demographic groups].”...