GovernmentExecutive.com

A federal appeals court recently ruled the Bureau of Prisons violated an employee's Fourth Amendment rights by searching his car for a gun without sufficient reason to believe he was carrying one.

The May 12 decision overturns an earlier Merit Systems Protection Board ruling that said Bureau of Prison officials had reasonable grounds to look for a weapon in Derrick Wiley's car.

After an anonymous informant told the warden at the Miami, Fla., prison where Wiley worked that he carried a loaded 9 mm gun in his car, the warden ordered a search of the vehicle. When Bureau of Prison officials approached Wiley in the prison parking lot and told him they needed to search his car, he drove away.

Wiley returned 30 minutes later and submitted to a search. No gun was found. The Bureau of Prisons later fired Wiley for refusing to submit to the search initially. Wiley contended that the agency had violated his Fourth Amendment rights, which protect him against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Merit Systems Protection Board decided that the search was not unreasonable, because parking lots are part of the workplace and employees should not have an expectation of privacy in the parking lot. Also, it is a federal crime to bring firearms onto prison grounds without permission from the warden, so investigators were right to check up on Wiley, the board ruled.

But in a May 12 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined that the Bureau of Prisons should not have fired Wiley. The court ruled that the prison warden lacked sufficient evidence against him to search his car.

While anonymous tips such as the one the warden acted on can justify a search, he should have tried to corroborate the tip before he ordered a search of the car, the appeals court ruled.

Derrick A. Wiley v. Department of Justice, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (02-3044), May 12, 2003

Meals Not Ready to Eat

After 17 years of negotiations, the Defense Department and a company that provides pre-packaged meals for military service members have yet to settle a contract dispute.

In November 1984, the Defense Logistics Agency and Defense Personnel Support Center awarded Freedom Industries Inc., which has since changed its name to Freedom NY Inc., a $17.2 million contract to assemble and package combat meals. The agreement set up a series of deadlines for meal delivery, with the last deadline in December 1985.

Freedom Industries repeatedly failed to deliver meal packages on time. The contractor claimed that financial troubles, caused partly by the Defense Department withholding periodic payments for progress on the contract, had prevented it from finishing its work.

In turn, the Defense Department claimed that it had every right to withhold the payments, because Freedom Industries had not met its deadlines. A clause in the agreement said that under the Defense Acquisition Regulation, the department reserved the right to withhold contract payments if the company did not live up to its end of the deal.

Defense and Freedom Industries entered negotiations to resolve the dispute and reached a settlement in October 1986. The settlement absolved Defense of responsibility for delaying the meal delivery by withholding payments, and granted Freedom Industries a deadline extension.

In 1987, Defense terminated Freedom's contract, claiming the company had not held up its end of the agreement. The contractor filed a claim with the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals, arguing that instead, Defense had breached the contract terms by failing to make payments. Furthermore, Defense had purposely delayed payments in order to force a settlement, the contractor contended.

The Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals ruled against Defense in 2001 and awarded Freedom a price adjustment to make up for money lost by the delayed payments. In a decision issued Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld that decision.

The federal appeals court agreed that the settlement was invalid, because Freedom Industries had signed it under duress. Defense officials acknowledged that they knew the contractor was in financial trouble, but "nevertheless, the government withheld the progress payments for the sole purpose of pressuring the contractor into signing [the settlement]," the court ruled. "The contract did not allow the government to withhold progress payments simply to pressure the contractor into giving up its rights."

Donald Rumsfeld v. Freedom NY Inc., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (02-1105), May 22, 2003