Read the legal case below and answer the following questions: 1. In your opinion, how much should the value of the contract be reduced by and why? 1. What is said about Pequet'a bid? 3. How are unbalanced bids dened? MJ. PAQUET, lNC... Plaihti ff-Appellant. v. NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION. Defendant-Respondent Legal Case In ctober 1992, the DOT solicited bids for a. contract to rehabilitate highways in northern New Jersey. The project inchided highway resurfacing, safety improvements, and the maturation and painting of twelve bridges along various routes. Several days before submitting its bid, Parquet received an estimate from a potential subcontractor for the bridge painting work included in the project. Pequot used that estimate to calculate the forty-four individual pay items contained in its bid pertaining to the bridge painting. After adding its customary thirty percent mark-up for costs, overhead, and prot to the bridge painting pay items, Paquet's total bid for the bridge painting work amounted to 3826.43.50. Shortly before the bid submission deadline. Paquet received a signicantly lower estimate of $45.414 for the bridge painting work from subcontractor 0.]. Painting. According to Pequot, because \"it was impracticable and highly risky to redo all the prices for the forty-four bridge structure items," Pequot did not amend the $326,416 . gure it originally entered on the bid for the bridge painting work. Rather, Paquet lowered the price of several of the other "common" items. including mobilization and construction layout costs. to o'set the now inated price for the bridge painting work. Accordingly, Pallet submitted an "unbalan " bid to the DOT. An \"unbalan \" bid is one \"in which one or more of the y items fails to m its share ofaeeost ofthe work andt'he contractor's mitt." Paquet's bid of 511995.324 was the lowest presented to the DOT. which subsequently awarded Pequot the contract. At that time. the DDT was unaware that Paquet had submitted an imbalanced bid. Before the work commenced, Parquet submitted and received approval of the 0.1. Painting subcontract from the DOT. The record does not indicate whether the DOT compared the subcontract price with the amount in Paquet's bid for the bridge painting work. After the DOT awarded Paquet the contract. IDS-HA issued revised regulations in respect of the cleaning and painting of existing bridges containing lead-based paint. Those regulations directly affected the bridge painting work in the Paquet DDT contract. Paquet asserted that the new DSHA regulations "significantly increased the nature and the magnitude of procedures governing [the] cleaning and painting [of] existing structural steel\" containing lead-based paint. Accordingly. Paquet informed the DOT that compliance with the new regulations would result in Pequet's incurring substantial and unanticipated costs. Pequot made several requests to the DOT to increase the original contract price, cultninating in a nal request of S 1.2 80.261512! to cover costs precipitated by the new regulations. After considering Partner's proposal. the DOT informed Pequet that the DOT had decided to excise the bridge painting from the contract. Subsequently. Paquet received a change order from the DOT indicating that the bridge painting work had been deleted because \"[n]egotiations with [Pequet were] not successful." The amount deleted, $326,4'l3.5tl, represented the amount Pequet provided in its bid for the forty-four bridge painting pay itenrs. Paquet insisted that, under the contract, equity and case law, the DOT WM only be entitled to a deduction for the neural cost of the work, not a deduction based on the original contract unit prices.\" The parties unsuccessfully attempted to settle the dispute pursuant to the alternative dispute resolution procedure set forth in the contract Paquet then led this action against the DOT