It can be a daunting task to mine through the federal and state laws, regulations and court decisions to determine what rights and remedies you may have as a disappointed bidder on a public project. In a case involving a state university construction project, the Ohio Supreme Court recently provided a good road map of what do in such situations.
In Meccon, Inc. v. University of Akron (pdf), a contractor sought a temporary restraining order and other relief resulting from the university’s failure to award it the HVAC contract. The facts of Meccon are intricate because the project involved multiple scopes of work that could be submitted by offerors as stand-alone bids or combined bids. Ultimately, the contractor alleged that the university wrongfully awarded three of the stand-alone bids to the awardee—after the awardee had withdrawn its combined bid—which was in violation of the university’s own “Instructions to Bidders” documents and public bidding statutes. The contractor sought injunctive relief, as well as damages for its bid-preparation costs.