03-0246 MIAMI-DADE SCHOOL BD V. J. RUIZ

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State: Florida

Court: Florida Southern District Court

Docket No: 3d03-0246

Case Date: 05/19/2004

Plaintiff: 03-0246 MIAMI-DADE SCHOOL BD

Defendant: J. RUIZ

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IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF FLORIDA THIRD DISTRICT JANUARY TERM, A.D. 2004

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, Appellant,

** ** **

vs. ** J. RUIZ SCHOOL BUS SERVICE, INC. and A. OLIVEROS TRANSPORTATION, INC., Appellees. ** Opinion filed May 19, 2004. ** **

CASE NO. 3D03-246 LOWER TRIBUNAL NO. 00-25050

An appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Paul Siegel, Judge. Clyne & Self and Reginald J. Clyne; Shirlyon J. McWhorter and Marcy E. Abitz, for appellant. Marlow, Connell, Valerius, Abrams, Adler, Newman & Lewis and Jose I. Valdes, for appellees.

Before LEVY, GREEN, and FLETCHER, JJ. 1

GREEN, J. The Miami-Dade County School Board ("School Board") appeals from a final judgment awarding lost profits and prejudgment interest to the appellees, J. Ruiz School Bus Services, Inc. ("Ruiz") and A. Oliveros Transportation, Inc. ("Oliveros"), for the School Board's unlawful disqualification of the appellees' competitive bids. We reverse as we conclude that such awards are

non-recoverable in this case. The undisputed facts show that during the summer of 1999, the School Board elicited bids from private bus companies for some of its school routes for the 1999-2000 school year, renewable by agreement for two additional one-year periods. Twenty-one vendors, including appellees, Ruiz and Oliveros, responded to the School Board's invitation to bid. The bids

submitted by the appellees were the lowest for two of the routes. However, four bids, including those of the appellees, were rejected by the School Board as non-responsive because they failed to include the required Florida Division of Unemployment Compensation Employer's Quarterly Report Form UCT-6, showing current employees and payroll amount. Thereafter, the School

Board awarded the routes to the next lowest bidders who had submitted the prescribed UCT-6 forms. 2

The appellees timely filed their respective notices of protest, challenging the School Board's actions, with the State of Florida, Division of Administrative Hearings. Rather than

abating or suspending the award process pending the outcome of the protest proceedings,1 the School Board entered into contracts with the second lowest bidders for the two bus routes. Following a hearing, the administrative law judge ("ALJ") found that, although the appellees failed to submit the required UCT-6 forms, the majority of the other bidders had submitted UCT6 forms that were incomplete, in conflict with other submitted forms, incorrectly filled out, and/or out of date. The ALJ

further found that the appellees' failure to submit the UCT-6 forms was a minor irregularity, not a material deviation from the bid specifications, because it did not affect the price of the bids, give the appellees a competitive advantage over other bidders, or give the School Board any reason to doubt the appellees' ability to fulfill their contracts. Moreover, the ALJ found that by accepting deficient UCT-6 forms from other bidders, the School Board had waived deviations regarding these forms from the bid requirements, and thus the School Board's failure to award contracts to the appellees, as the lowest bidders, was

1

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