Let go after 74 years, law firm sues client to regain representation
For 74 years, a Portsmouth, Virginia, law firm represented the city’s housing authority.
But in September the authority decided to award a legal services contract to another local law firm.
Now, after protesting the award administratively to no avail, Cooper Spong & Davis is suing the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority and its board of directors, in an effort to regain the representation, reports the Virginian-Pilot.
Filed Wednesday in state circuit court, the law firm’s complaint seeks a declaratory judgment. It says the authority and its board violated federal regulations as well as the Virginia Public Procurement Act by failing to award the contract to Cooper Spong.
Federal regulations required the housing authority to provide its “ranking criteria” to legal counsel applicants and follow standards published in a request for proposal when awarding the contract, the suit says. However, the defendants didn’t do so, the complaint alleges.
Evaluated according to the ranking criteria, Cooper Spong got a 91.07 score while the only other law firm to seek the job, Eric O. Moody and Associates, got 76.33, the newspaper reports.
The Moody firm offered a $160 hourly rate and Cooper Spong offered $165.
Kevin Cosgrove of Hunton & Williams in Norfolk is representing the housing authority in the litigation. He declined to discuss the case in detail but told the Virginian-Pilot that “it’s practically unprecedented for a law firm to sue a client because it wants to continue to be their law firm.”
In a written response earlier this month to the administrative protest by Cooper Spong, the authority said that it had acted appropriately: “Competitive offers are solicited, proposals are evaluated, and award is made to the offeror whose proposal is most advantageous to the PHA (Public Housing Authority), with price and other factors (as specified in the solicitation) considered.”
Councilman Mark Whitaker, who has sought to diversify Portsmouth contracts for doing business with the city, supports the award to the Moody firm, the newspaper reports. It “ensures that competent legal representation will continue effectively, taxpayers’ dollars will be spent equitably and an over-74-year monopoly by a white law firm, paid by taxpayer’s dollars, will end appropriately,” he wrote in an email.
