Bid for Public Contract Deemed Compliant When Post Office Box Address of Owners of Bidder Given As Opposed to Home Address
In a published decision of the Appellate Division in Asphalt Paving Sys. v. Borough of Stone Harbor, 2022 N.J. Super. LEXIS 136 (App. Div. Nov. 14, 2022), the Court was asked to decide whether a bidder to a public contract, to be issued by Borough of Stone Harbor, submitted a statutorily compliant bid by listing its shareholders’ post office box, instead of a home address. The Court had to address whether N.J.S.A. 52:25-24.2, which required that no business entity may be awarded a public contract unless it submits with its bid “a statement setting forth the names and addresses of the individuals owning more than ten percent of the entity” mandated that a home address for the owners be provided.
In August 2020, the Borough of Stone Harbor had issued a notice to bidders, inviting the submission of bids for a construction project. Fred M. Schiavone Construction, Inc. submitted the lowest bid and Asphalt Paving Systems, Inc. had the second lowest bid. With its bid, Schiavone identified Fred and Roberta Schiavone as its two stockholders and provided a post office address for them. The bid was awarded to Schiavone as the lowest bidder.
In October 2020, Asphalt Paving filed a lawsuit challenging the award of the contract to Schiavone on the basis that Schiavone failed to meet the requirement of N.J.S.A. 52:25-24.2 because home addresses of the two stockholders were not provided, despite the bid specifications asking for the inclusion of the owners’ home addresses. The trial judge determined that this omission was a “waivable” requirement because it would not “deprive the municipality of its assurance that the contract would be entered into, performed and guaranteed according to its specified requirements and would not give the bidder a position of advantage over other bidders or … undermine the necessary common standard of competition.”
This ruling was appealed to the Appellate Division. The Court rejected Asphalt Paving’s argument that the bidder’s owners’ home addresses must be provided. The Appellate Division noted that it must examine the language of the statute to determine legislative intent in enacting a law. A court may not rewrite an enactment of the Legislature and “presume the Legislature intended something other than that expressed by way of the statute’s plain language.”
Here, the Court noted that the word “address” could suggest multiple things because a person could have multiple addresses – home, business, or mailing address. The Appellate Division found that “[t]here was no evidence in the enactment itself, and nothing about the statutory goals the Legislature was pursuing by enacting the statute, to suggest a desire to compel the production of one of these types of addresses.”
Finally, the Court stated that it would ascribe to the word “address” its generally accepted meaning and concluded that the Legislature intended that a bid would comply with N.J.S.A. 52:25-24.2, “so long as the bidder provided the home, business or mailing address for each owner of ten or more percent.” If the Legislature intended to require the bidder’s owners to provide their home address, it would have stated “home addresses” in the statute versus just using the term “addresses.”
Hence, the trial court’s decision upholding the award to Schiavone was affirmed.
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