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ASBCA Holds that Transmission Emails are "Part of the Same Transaction" as Mods for Plain Meaning Purposes

Client Alert | 1 min read | 05.24.19

Can contractors reserve rights in a transmission email while executing a contract modification that is silent on such reservation? The ASBCA recently affirmed again that yes, contractors can. In NMS Management, Inc., ASBCA No. 61519 (Apr. 11, 2019), a dispute over the “improper attempt at a partial exercise” of an option period, the ASBCA rejected the Government’s argument that NMS was strictly bound by the terms of a signed bilateral modification – viewed in isolation – because NMS’s accompanying transmission email stated that it was signing under protest. The ASBCA clarified the plain meaning rule by citing precedent that the “interpretation of a contract as a whole requires consideration of all documents that are part of the same transaction together.” The Board held that “the [transmission] email dispels any notion that Modification No. P00011 is the only writing to consider when evaluating the legal consequences of the modification.”

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Client Alert | 6 min read | 09.02.25

Landmark Proposed Rule May Open American Skies to Expanded Commercial Drone Deployments

For years, the deployment of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), or drones, in U.S. airspace has been constrained by regulations that limited how those devices operated when they strayed beyond the sightline of their human controller. Heretofore, regulations required drone operators to receive individual waivers or exemptions when using drones “beyond their visual line of sight,” known as BVLOS. Industry has felt that these regulations have hampered widespread UAS usage in areas such as package delivery, surveying, and farming, among others....