U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
BOARD OF CONTRACT APPEALS
The Appeal of PROFESSIONAL PRINTING CENTER, INC.
Docket No. GPO BCA 12-87
July 7, 1989
MICHAEL F. DiMARIO
Administrative Law Judge
OPINION
This appeal, timely filed by Professional Printing
Center, Inc., 627 Graham, Emporia, KS 66801 (Appellant),
is from the March 13, 1987, final decision of Rolf A.
Beike, Contracting Officer (CO), St. Louis Regional
Printing Procurement Office, United States Government
Printing Office (Respondent), rejecting certain work and
requiring its reprinting by Appellant at no additional
cost to the Government because misstated quantity counts
on mailing labels generated by Appellant had caused an
improper distribution to be effected. The appeal is
denied and the decision of the CO is affirmed for the
reasons set forth hereinbelow.
BACKGROUND
Respondent, by Purchase Order J-1287 dated January 1,
1987, awarded Appellant a 1-year requirements contract
identified as Jacket 754-116, Program 1699-S, to produce
and distribute, by first class mail in accordance with
U.S. Postal Service Domestic and Foreign Mail
regulations, such orders of two certain Department of the
Air Force publications as might be required and
requisitioned from time to time during the term.
Appellant was to generate mailing labels for one of the
publications, "Appendix 1 to Annex C to MAC OPORD 17-76"
(Appendix 1), from address data stored on "floppy
disc(s)" to be furnished by the Government. Each label
so generated was to contain a copy distribution entry
which Appellant was to follow in effecting distribution.
Each specific order was to be originated by issuance of a
"Print Order" to Appellant for the work required to be
performed.
Print Order 60001 for production and distribution of 692
copies of Appendix 1 was issued to Appellant on February
4, 1987. Thereafter, production and distribution
occurred. However, on February 17, 1987, Respondent
advised Appellant that the Air Force complained that the
distribution was incorrectly performed. Copy count data,
which was to accompany an address as the last data entry
before perforations separating one label from another, in
fact appeared as the first entry on the next label
following the perforations, etc. Accordingly, the order
was being partially rejected and Appellant was being
directed to correct the error at no additional expense to
the Government. (Rule 4 File, hereinafter "R4 File," Tab
C.)
Appellant responded by letter of February 26, 1987,
consenting to reprint and distribute the product but
demanding payment for such work, as well as for the
rejected work, inasmuch as it allegedly received "[n]o
instruction, clear or unclear, where No. of copies goes
in contract specifications, print order, instruction
sheet, computer program, or even the test label itself."
(R4 File, Tab E.)
As a consequence:
In reading the computer screen, and by lining up the label
where it should go (both logically and as a matter of
everyday standard operation), We ran the labels off using
common sense, logic, common & standard operation procedure.
. . . .
We mailed according to "Domestic Mail" regulations, and
to mail with copies at the bottom would be to do the
opposite of the manuals [sic] regulation that states in
numerous places that "The zip code may be carried as the
bottom line of the address, provided it is immediately
beneath the city and state and no character or digits
precede or follow it."
R4 File, Tab E.
Appellant attached a photocopy of the test label
annotated by it, as well as copies of "U.S. Postal
Services' Domestic Mail Manual" (Issue 21 dated September
4, 1986), pages 122.37, 122.632, and 122.633, to support
its allegations. (R4 File, Tab E.)
In turn, the CO responded by "final decision" letter of
March 13, 1987, dismissing Appellant's claim that it
followed standard operating procedures by stating:
"Logically, the test preceding the mailing labels would
not result in one incomplete label, one complete label,
and then stop in the middle of another label, but rather
would consist of two complete labels with the perforation
placed after the 'copies' line." (R4 File, Tab F.)
Moreover, the CO claimed that the postal regulations
relied upon by Appellant were not applicable "here since
they dealt with letter-size mail processed for OCR
[Optical Character Recognition]." and that "Paragraph
122.642 of the DMM does not prohibit additional
information from being printed below the ZIP code. The
limitation '... no characters or digits precede or follow
it' addresses itself to information carried on the same
line; to interpret this any other way means that the
address itself could not be printed either, because it
'precedes' the ZIP code." (R4 File, Tab F.)
Accordingly, the CO affirmed its partial rejection of the
order and renewed its demand that deficiencies in
distribution be made up at no additional expense to the
Government.
There followed Appellant's notice of appeal to this Board
by letter of June 9, 1987, in which in nearly verbatim
form it repeats the allegations made by it in its
February 26, 1987, letter to the CO. (R4 File, Tab G.)
By letter of July 2, 1987, Appellant was notified of the
docketing of the appeal and furnished a copy of the Rules
of the Board. The letter included the Board's standard
advice respecting the requirements for filing of a
Complaint, the right to supplement the record with any
relevant documents not furnished by the Respondent, and
its right to elect to have the matter decided after a
hearing or upon the written record without a hearing. No
response was received from Appellant within the time
provided in the rules. (Official File, Tab 4.)
Respondent was notified that although no Complaint was
filed, the notice of appeal met the requirements of a
Complaint. Thus, Respondent by Answer docketed with the
Board on September 8, 1987, responded to Appellant's June
9, 1987, letter. The Respondent alleges that the error
was solely that of Appellant; that Appellant was given
adequate guidance to perform the contract correctly
inasmuch as a two-address sample was provided on the
floppy disk "to enable Appellant to align its equipment
and to ensure that the full address and the correct
'copies' notation was printed on each label"; that
"Appellant failed to follow the sample provided"; that
"[b]y misaligning the marginally punched continuous
labels, appellant created a situation where the
perforations incorrectly divided the address from its
corresponding number of copies line . . ."; and that by
its statement in both its February 26, 1987 and June 9,
1987, letters that "[a]t the time, we did not notice the
end label with copies on it without an address." was "an
admission that appellant was negligent in failing to
discover the misalignment." Moreover, Appellant had
successfully performed these same requirements under the
January 1, 1985 through December 31, 1985, Program 1699-S
contract.
No other information has been furnished to the Board.
Thus, the appeal is before the Board in this form for
decision upon the written record.
DISCUSSION
The question presented is whether or not Appellant should
be held liable for the errors in printing and
distribution in light of its argument that it was given
no express directions respecting the placement of copy
count data on each label. Having examined all the facts,
the Board, being in full agreement with Respondent's
analysis of the case, thinks that it should be.
The Board believes that a reasonably prudent printer,
having the expertise to access addresses stored on 5-1/4"
floppy disc(s) in DS/DD, MS-DOS 2.11 compatible format
using a Government furnished dBase command file to output
labels from a dBase II data base as called for in the
contract specifications, when given two test labels
preceding the mailing labels in the data base arranged in
"text followed by number of copies" format, thusly;
THIS IS A TEST LABEL FOR ALIGNMENT OF THE LABEL BOTH
VERTICALLY AND HORIZANTALLY [sic]. INSURE [sic] THE
LABEL STARTS PRINTING ON THE EXTREME LEFT EDGE.
COPIES 2
THIS IS A TEST LABEL FOR ALIGNMENT OF THE LABEL BOTH
VERTICALLY AND HORIZANTALLY [sic]. INSURE [sic] THE
LABEL STARTS PRINTING ON THE EXTREME LEFT EDGE.
COPIES 2
would have recognized from such structure that the copy entry for
each label was to follow the address entry it accompanied and not
be separated from it by perforations.
On the other hand, Appellant's statement that it made a
deliberate judgment call to place the copy count at the
top of the label because of the purported limitation in
the Postal Regulations suggests that it was aware of the
proper location of the copy count data on the test
labels. If such be the case, which we doubt, Appellant
exercised poor judgment. The Board thinks, however, that
a more likely scenario is that suggested by Respondent,
i.e., Appellant misaligned the job causing the
perforations to separate the copy data from its address,
thus resulting in "the end label with copies on it
without an address" which Appellant admits to in both its
February 26 and June 9, 1987, letters.
Given such facts and circumstances, it is the decision of
this Board that the appeal be denied and the decision of
the CO is affirmed.
IT IS SO ORDERED.