Justice HOBBS delivered the Opinion of the Court. INDEX OF OPINION Introduction and Holding ...................................................... 931 I. Facts ......................................................................... 932 II. Holding ....................................................................... 935 A. Standard of Review .................................................... 935 B. Constitutional and Statutory Prior Appropriation Setting .............. 936 C. Statutory...
Justice COATS delivered the Opinion of the Court. Monica Vickery petitioned for review of the court of appeals judgment affirming the district court's reduction of exemplary damages in her defamation suit against the mother and sister of her deceased husband. See Vickery v. Vickery, ___ P.3d ___, 2010 WL 963204 (Colo.App.2010). Both the district court and court of appeals understood section 13-21-102 of Colorado's revised statutes to limit Vickery's exemplary damages to an amount equal to...
Justice RICE delivered the Opinion of the Court. In this original proceeding under C.A.R. 21, we review the trial court's order granting Wal-Mart a new trial based on a purportedly untimely disclosure and a jury verdict that allegedly was not supported by the evidence and instead was the result of prejudice. We hold that the trial court abused its discretion in holding that Holly Averyt's attorney violated discovery rules when he failed to disclose a document from the City of Greeley that he...
Justice RICE delivered the Opinion of the Court. This original proceeding arises out of a medical malpractice case currently pending in the Denver district court. Plaintiff Ernest Ortega has sued defendants Dr. David Lieuwen and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Colorado ("Kaiser") for malpractice based on what he alleges to have been negligent medical treatment given to him on September 28, 2007 and October 2, 2007. Ortega seeks relief from a trial court order denying him a protective order...
Justice HOBBS delivered the Opinion of the Court. We granted certiorari in this case to review the court of appeals' decision in Colorado Mining Ass'n v. Huber, 240 P.3d 453 (Colo.App.2010). 1 The court of appeals ruled that Article X, Section 20 of the Colorado Constitution ("Amendment 1") requires statewide voter approval each time the Colorado Department of Revenue ("Department") calculates an increase in the amount of tax due per ton of coal extracted as directed by the tax rate...
Justice MARTINEZ delivered the Opinion of the Court. In December 2003, Plaintiffs filed a class action, alleging that BP America Production Company ("BP"), formerly known as Amoco Production Company ("Amoco"), improperly deducted postproduction costs from royalty payments due between January 1, 1986 and December 1, 1997 (the "Class Time Period"). To toll the applicable six-year statute of limitations, Plaintiffs claimed that BP fraudulently concealed the material facts which gave rise to their...
Justice MARTINEZ delivered the Opinion of the Court. At issue in this land damages class action are the standards a trial court applies when deciding whether to certify a class pursuant to C.R.C.P. 23. C.R.C.P. 23 provides trial courts with a procedural tool for consolidating claims and managing them as a class action. The rule provides that the class certification decision must be made "[a]s soon as practicable" and "may be conditional." C.R.C.P. 23(c). In this appeal, we clarify three...
Justice MARTINEZ delivered the Opinion of the Court. Consumers brought a class action against ten automobile dealerships operating under the Medved name, 1 and John Medved individually, alleging violations of the Colorado Consumer Protection Act ("CCPA"). Plaintiffs alleged that Medved's sales documents failed to disclose the price and existence of various dealer-added aftermarket products, thereby causing an injury to Plaintiffs who paid for those products. Plaintiffs sought certification of...
Justice HOBBS delivered the Opinion of the Court. We granted certiorari to review the court of appeals' unpublished decision in Ronald Lewis v. The Glenelk Ass'n, Inc., No. 09CA1209, 2010 WL 971691. 1 In this private condemnation proceeding, respondent Ronald P. Lewis seeks to condemn a private way of necessity across land owned by The Glenelk Association, Inc. ("Glenelk") to access an allegedly landlocked parcel of land for residential development. 2 The trial court dismissed Lewis's...
Justice EID delivered the Opinion of the Court. The juvenile court found that Respondent J.L.B. ("Father") had abandoned A.B. (the "Child") and that therefore the Child was available for adoption by Petitioner D.P.H. ("Stepfather"). The juvenile court also determined that the fact that Father had filed parenting-time motions in the dissolution court did not outweigh overwhelming evidence of abandonment, including the fact that Father had not seen the Child in the twenty-one months prior to the...
Justice COATS delivered the Opinion of the Court. Lewis sought review of the court of appeals' judgment in People v. Lewis, No. 04CA2072, 2009 WL 368655 (Colo.App. Feb. 12, 2009) (not published pursuant to C.A.R. 35(f)), which affirmed his convictions and sentences for a number of offenses, including three counts each of kidnapping and sexually assaulting his kidnap victims. In accordance with our holding in People v. Henderson, 810 P.2d 1058 (Colo.1991), the trial court sentenced Lewis...
Chief Justice BENDER delivered the Opinion of the Court. I. Introduction This original proceeding concerns an interstate child custody dispute between a divorced mother and father. The parties' two children currently live in Colorado with their mother, Melissa J. Springston, and step-father. The boy is eleven years old, and the girl is nine years old. The father, Mark S. Dedie, lives in New York State. In this case, a New York family court referee ruled that New York no longer had exclusive,...
Justice RICE delivered the Opinion of the Court. In this original proceeding, we determine whether a litigant may compel discovery of financial documents which identify an opposing litigant's compensation and how that compensation is determined. We hold that a litigant has a personal right to privacy in these types of financial records and that disclosure is only required if the requesting party proves that: (1) the documents are relevant to the subject matter of the case; (2) disclosure is...
Justice M RQUEZ delivered the Opinion of the Court. In 2006, a jury convicted David Henry Wood of manslaughter for fatally shooting a person in his apartment during a drug transaction. On direct appeal, Wood argued that the trial court erred in denying his pretrial request for immunity from prosecution under section 18-1-704.5, C.R.S. (2010), the "make-my-day" statute. The court of appeals declined to address Wood's challenge to the trial court's pretrial order, concluding that such an order...
Justice EID delivered the Opinion of the Court. In 2006, the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District (the "District") filed an application for absolute water rights, based on their conditional water rights on Four Counties Ditch Number 3 ("Four Counties Rights"). The State Engineer and Division Engineer, Water Division 6 (the "Engineers") opposed the application and moved for summary judgment. The water court denied the Engineers' motion, but ruled as a matter of law that in order to perfect a...
Justice HOBBS delivered the Opinion of the Court. In Denver Post Corp. v. Ritter, 230 P.3d 1238 (Colo.App.2009), the court of appeals concluded that cell phone bills for calls Governor Bill Ritter ("the Governor") made on his personal cell phone were not public records subject to disclosure under the Colorado Open Records Act ("CORA"). 24-72-201 to -206, C.R.S. (2010). We granted certiorari, and affirm. 1 Petitioners, journalist Karen Crummy and her employer Denver Post Corporation (...
Justice M RQUEZ delivered the Opinion of the Court. The Uninsured Motorist Act, section 10-4-609, C.R.S. (2010), requires insurers to offer uninsured/underinsured motorist ("UM/UIM") coverage with every "automobile liability or motor vehicle liability" policy sold in Colorado. In Apodaca v. Allstate Insurance Co., 232 P.3d 253 , 258 (Colo.App. 2009), the court of appeals held that this statutory requirement does not apply to umbrella policies. We granted a petition for a writ of certiorari...
Justice MARTINEZ delivered the Opinion of the Court. Petitioner Qwest Services Corporation ("Qwest") was found negligent for failing to maintain a utility pole that collapsed while respondent Andrew Blood was climbing it as part of his employment as a lineman with respondent/third-party defendant Public Service Company of Colorado, doing business as Xcel Energy ("Xcel"). The jury determined that Qwest was 100% at fault for Blood's injuries and awarded $9,917,600 for economic damages, $10,000,...
Justice EID delivered the Opinion of the Court. The City and County of Broomfield ("Broomfield") filed an application for conditional appropriative rights of exchange in the district court for Water Division No. 1 for two claimed exchange reaches on the South Platte River and Big Dry Creek, a tributary of the South Platte River. The conditional appropriative rights of exchange included claims to seventeen sources of substitute water supply: nine that Broomfield owns or controls and eight that...
Justice HOBBS delivered the Opinion of the Court. INDEX OF OPINION Introduction....................................................................... 653 Holding............................................................................ 654 I. Faqts.......................................................................... 654 A. The Burlington-Barr Lake System............................................. 655 B. Burlington 1885 Water Rights Under Case No. 11200 .......................... 656...
