Justia U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

In 1983 the Department of Energy contracted to dispose of spent nuclear fuel from plaintiff's Columbia, Washington facility. The DOE failed to perform and, with its own temporary storage filling up, the plaintiff began work on its own permanent storage facility in 2002. The trial court award of $56.9 million included amounts for modifications to the temporary storage facility, indirect overhead, and financing costs. The Federal Circuit vacated. The plaintiff was entitled to damages for modifications only to the extent that it could prove that, but for the breach, those costs would not have been incurred; the trial court did not require the plaintiff to prove causation. The trial court properly included an award for indirect overhead calculated to a reasonable certainty. The government was entitled to sovereign immunity (28 U.S.C. 2516) with respect to the award of $6 million in interest; the contract did not waive immunity.