OREANDA-NEWS. February 14, 2013. SORAINEN Estonia is representing Swiss manufacturer of locomotives and rolling stock, Stadler Bussnang, in the biggest Baltic public procurement proceedings „Purchase of new trams for tram line No. 4 in Tallinn” carried out by Tallinna Linnatranspordi Aktsiaselts, the governing public company of all public transport (trams, buses and trolleybuses) in the Estonian capital city, Tallinn, reported the press-centre of SORAINEN.

This case is highly complex and difficult because throughout the procurement process the procuring authority has preferred the competitor and has refused to sign a contract with our client, doing its utmost to award the procurement contract to the competitor. The contracting authority rejected our client’s offer as noncompliant and declared the competitor’s offer admissible and successful. We obtained a decision from the Public Procurement Appeals Committee stating that the decision of the contracting authority to declare the competitor’s offer admissible was invalid.

This procurement has received much attention from the Estonian and foreign press and is significant in many ways. From a legal perspective, the first preliminary injunction was awarded to us in a situation where the appeal to the court had not yet been filed. In addition, the Circuit Court had to decide whether the contracting authority has the competence to declare one offer compliant and the other offer inadmissible where both offers suffer from similar deficiencies. Even though the Circuit Court at first refused to give our client initial legal protection, later, influenced by our written argumentation the court, in a unique move, decided to ban signing of the contract. In addition, the court proceedings have been conducted in a very short time frame and State Supervision is investigating simultaneously with the court proceedings.

The client is being advised by partners Carri Ginter and Allar Joks, associate Triin Valjaots and senior associate Veiko Vaske.