The Court of Appeals of Virginia reversed a robbery conviction because the trial court considered evidence of two prior robbery convictions from Maryland.  The issue was whether robbery in Maryland is “substantially similar” to robbery in Virginia. In Virginia, an intent to steal which arises after the application of force is insufficient to prove robbery.  However, in Maryland, if force precedes the taking, the intent to steal need not coincide with the force.  Since in

Police seized a motorist for speeding.  During the ticketing, the driver and passenger separately told the officer different things about their travels within 9 minutes of the stop.  This was short enough for the officer to call in a drug dog 13 minutes after the stop to alert the officer to the presence of drugs in the trunk 3 minutes later. (There were other clues of criminal activity — nervousness, two people but four phones,

Two large food distributors interested in competing for a $9.3 million contract to supply food to military and civilian customers in Texas and New Mexico win their pre-award bid protest against the Army’s Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support.  They successfully argued that the DLA’s waiver of the general requirement that government contracts conform with customary commercial practices in the industry was applied irrationally.  The case is U.S. Foodservice, Inc. and Labatt Food Service, L.P. v.United States, 2011

In this post-award bid protest case, a contractor who offered the government a very low price on a government contract failed to win the award.  It complained that the Agency improperly used an inadequate Independent Government Cost Estimate (“ICGE”) to conclude that the contractor was not offering a realistic price.  The Court of Federal Claims held that the ICGE was adequate and dismissed the bid protest.  The case is D&S Consultants, Inc. v.United States,2011U.S.Claims LEXIS 2098

A government contractor wins its post-award protest where the agency failed to adequately document its “best value” analysis.  This is the latest of a string of recent successful bid protests wherein the government loses on the basis of poor documentation.  The case is Standard Communications, Inc. v.United Statesand CACI-ISS, Inc. and SAIC, No. 11-530 C (November 22, 2011). The Department of Veteran’s Affairs issued a Request for Proposals for its Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology (“T4”) Program.