Unbalanced bids and Contract Changes Read the legal case below and answer the following questions: 1. In your opinion, how much should the value of the contract be red 2. What is said about Paquet's bid? 3. How are unbalanced bids defined?M.J. PAQUET, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, Defendant-Respondent Legal Case In October 1992, the DOT solicited bids for a contract to rehabilitate highways in northern New Jersey. The project included highway resurfacing, safety improvements, and the restoration and painting of twelve bridges along various routes. Several days before submitting its bid, Paquet received an estimate from a potential subcontractor for the bridge painting work included in the project. Paquet 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 profit to the bridge painting pay items, Paquet's total bid for the bridge painting work amounted to $826,473.50. Shortly before the bid submission deadline, Paquet received a significantly lower estimate of $450,414 for the bridge painting work from subcontractor O.J. Painting. According to Paquet, because "it was impracticably and highly risky to redo all the prices for the forty-four bridge structure items," Paquet did not amend the $826,473.50 figure 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 offset the now inflated price for the bridge painting work. Accordingly, Paquet submitted an "unbalanced" bid to the DOT. An "unbalanced" bid is one "in which one or more of the pay items fails to carry its share of the cost of the work and the contractor's profit."Paquet's bid of $17,906,324 was the lowest presented to the DOT, which subsequently awarded Paquet the contract. At that time, the DOT was unaware that Paquet had submitted an unbalanced bid. Before the work commenced, Paquet submitted and received approval of the O.J. 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, OSHA 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 DOT contract. Paquet asserted that the new OSHA 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 Paquet's incurring substantial and unanticipated costs. Paquet made several requests to the DOT to increase the original contract price, culminating in a final request of $1,280,267.50 to cover costs precipitated by the new regulations. After considering Paquet's proposal, the DOT informed Paquet 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 "[negotiations with [Paquet were] not successful." The amount deleted, $826,473.50, represented the amount Paquet provided in its bid for the forty-four bridge painting pay items.Paquet insisted that, under the contract, equity and case law, the DOT would only be entitled to a deduction for the actual 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 filed this action against the DOT