[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Daehyun] A developer that failed the mid-term test evaluation while attempting to supply new chemical, biological, and radiological protective suits to the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) filed an appeal lawsuit after being disqualified from bidding due to 'contract non-fulfillment' and won in the first trial.
According to the legal community on the 6th, the Seoul Administrative Court Administrative Division 4 (Presiding Judge Kim Jeongjung) recently ruled in favor of the plaintiff in the first trial of the lawsuit filed by chemical industry specialist company H against the head of DAPA to cancel the disqualification from bidding.
Earlier, H researched and developed new chemical, biological, and radiological protective suits and contracted with DAPA to supply them in 2018. The Army Test and Evaluation Group in the 2017 operational test evaluation stated that the evaluation was stopped because the 'storage life' evaluation result, which checks protection duration, effective time, storage life, and washability performance, was below the standard. The same result came out in the retest after supplementation.
DAPA postponed the project and in 2019 notified H of the project suspension decision due to 'defects occurring during test evaluation and performance non-fulfillment,' and the following year canceled the 'supply contract.' Furthermore, they imposed a six-month restriction on H's bidding participation qualification, citing 'non-fulfillment of the supply contract.'
H stated, "We did our best to fulfill the contract, but we received an excessively harsh penalty," and filed an administrative lawsuit. During the trial, they argued, "the failure to meet standards was presumed to be due to the size of the 'military-owned' washing machine used in the evaluation and residual fabric softener in the washing machine" and "despite actively improving protective performance through technical supplementation and obtaining results that met protection performance in internal tests, the defendant refused a legitimate request for project period extension," they appealed.
The first trial ruled in favor of H, stating, "It is difficult to consider that the plaintiff failed to fulfill the contract without justifiable reason." The court stated, "The plaintiff made efforts to identify various defect causes such as fabric softener use and washing machine size differences and continuously implemented related improvements."
Furthermore, "The defendant also delayed reviewing whether to continue the project due to an audit of the project, and failed to secure the necessary U.S. comparative test samples required after changing the protection duration test evaluation method," and "Considering these points, it appears inevitable that the project progress was hindered, making the penalty in this case excessive," the court pointed out.
DAPA disagreed with the first trial ruling and appealed.
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