Terra Firma Chambers’ Stephen O’Rourke has successfully appeared for the defender in the Commercial Court action Boston Scientific Limited against The Common Service Agency [2016] CSOH 132.

The case concerned an application to the Court by the defenders, who are the National Procurement division of the National Health Service in Scotland. The defenders sought the Court’s permission to proceed with the implementation of a multi-million pound framework agreement.  The agreement, following a tendering exercise earlier in 2016, would allow for the provision of pacemakers and other implantable cardiac devices to the NHS by the various successful tenderers in that process.

The pursuers had been unsuccessful in the tender process and raised a number of issues. They raised an action seeking, among other remedies, to have the procurement exercise set aside failing which, a damages claim in the sum of £3,000,000.

The action raised interesting questions about the extent to which a contracting authority is obliged to verify data provided by an economic operator in the course of a tendering process.

Lord Tyre’s Opinion can be found by following the link at the top of the article.