Appeal court keeps Niklita out of school-meals tender

A catering bidder that answered two requests for price evidence with two requests for clarification has lost its appeal. The Lithuanian Court of Appeal's ruling No. e2A-880-467/2026 of 29 September 2026Teismai leaves in place the Vilnius Regional Court's 22 July 2026 judgment dismissing UAB Niklita's claim against the central purchasing body CPO LTTeismai, which had rejected Niklita's bid in the school-meals dynamic purchasing system tender No. 116370, concrete purchase No. CPO386004 for Kaunas Žaliakalnio progimnazija catering services.

The bid was 385.39 Eur, 39 per cent below the mean of the other bids — a point the parties did not dispute — triggering CPO LT's Article 57(1) duty to ask for justificationTeismai. The system sent an automatically generated request on 4 May 2026 with a 6 May deadline; CPO LT's 6 May reply asked for a detailed justification stating and evidencing the offered tariffs with supporting documents; Niklita answered with a second clarification request instead of evidence. Receiving no price evidence and no extension request, CPO LT rejected the bid on 7 May 2026 and rejected Niklita's 10 May complaint on 18 May.

The appeal panel corrected the first-instance court's reading of Article 57(2): the Article 57(1) presumption creates the duty to ask for justification but does not lower the bar for how the request is drafted. In either case Article 57(2) requires the authority to ask for the proposal details it considers necessary, including price or cost components and calculations, so the bidder understands which aspects to justify and has a real chance to submit evidence.

On the facts, though, CPO LT's request as supplemented passed that bar. An automatically generated request is not unlawful in itself — centralised purchasing runs through the CPO LT information system — and the 6 May explanation, read together with Niklita's own bid structure, told the bidder what was needed. The bid itemised dishes with units, including 0.04 Eur per 100 g of milk soup and broth and zero tariffs for bread and some drinks. Niklita could therefore understand it had to disclose which costs were built into those tariffs, how they were calculated, how the zero-tariff supplies would be covered, and to file evidence for it. That CPO LT had listed calculations more fully in a different tender shows it could have been more specific, the panel said, but different levels of detail do not by themselves prove a breach here.

The decisive point was cooperation. Abnormally-low-price justification is adversarial: both sides must engage, and only the bidder knows how its tariffs were computed. Niklita, an experienced professional tenderer, filed no calculations, explanations or documents within the deadline and never asked for more time, confining itself to repeated clarification requests even though the subject of the justification was sufficiently clear. CPO LT therefore had nothing on which it could satisfy itself that Niklita could deliver the services at the offered price, and the rejection was lawfulTeismai. The appeal was dismissed and the first-instance judgment left unchangedTeismai.

Costs follow the outcome: CPO LT recovers 2,722.50 Eur of appeal-stage costs from NiklitaTeismai, and the 60 Eur stamp duty on Niklita's interim-measures request is returned to it. The interim measures needed no separate ruling: they lapse with this ruling, which takes effect from adoption.

Legal basis: Lietuvos apeliacinio teismo 2026 m. rugsėjo 29 d. nutartis Nr. e2A-880-467/2026; Lietuvos Respublikos viešųjų pirkimų įstatymo 57 straipsnio 1, 2 dalys ir 3 dalies 1 punktas.