Blount Brothers Construction Company v. The United States

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that “to come under the ‘Severin’ doctrine the defendant must show, through some contractual term or a release, that the plaintiff-prime is not liable to the subcontractor”
• finding a latent ambiguity when thirteen of 264 separate drawings had to be scrutinized to interpret provision
• “In the case before us the ambiguity was subtle, not blatant; the contractor was genuinely misled and not deliberately seeking to profit from a recognized error by the Government.”
• the intention in the minds of government designers is of no consequence unless communicated to bidders
• “[Subcontractors] are obligated to bring to the Government’s attention major discrepancies or errors which they detect in the specifications or drawings, or else fail to do so at their peril.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).