Rocky Mountain Retail Management, LLC, d/b/a Rocky Mountain High, filed an application for a license to operate a medical marijuana center in the City of Northglenn. The Northglenn City Council, acting as the City’s medical marijuana local licensing authority, denied Rocky Mountain’s application after receiving evidence at two public hearings. Rocky Mountain sought judicial review of the City’s decision in the district court, arguing that the denial was not based on substantial evidence in the record and was therefore arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion. Rocky Mountain also asked the district court to declare certain licensing provisions of the Northglenn City Code unconstitutionally vague, including section 18-14-7(h), which sets forth factors a local licensing authority may consider before approving or denying a medical marijuana center license. The district court ruled that section 18-14-7(h) was unconstitutionally vague, and that the City’s denial of the license in reliance on that invalid provision was arbitrary and capricious. The City appealed. Because the phrase “number, type, and availability” in section 18-14-7(h) provided sufficient notice to applicants and reasonably constrained the exercise of the City’s discretion, the Colorado Supreme Court held section 18-14-7(h) was not void for vagueness. Furthermore, the Court held that the City’s decision to deny Rocky Mountain’s license application was supported by substantial evidence in the record, and therefore was not arbitrary and capricious. View "Rocky MountaIn Retail Mgmt. v. City of Northglenn" on Justia Law

A jury convicted defendant Sandra Jacobson of vehicular homicide, driving under the influence, and other related charges arising from a collision between her truck and a taxi cab. The collision killed two of the passengers in the taxi. During the jury selection process, a prospective juror asked the trial court why the jury has to avoid media coverage of the trial. On the first day of trial, the trial court admonished the jury to avoid media coverage of the trial. Throughout the trial, the trial court reminded the jury daily of the need to avoid all coverage involving Jacobson or the case. At issue in this appeal was whether the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to poll the jury about whether jurors had seen a prejudicial news report that had aired the night before and been posted online. Because the trial court gave repeated, specific admonitions — including on the day of the newscast — to jurors to avoid “newscasts” and “newspaper sites,” and these were the only places on which the prejudicial report was available, the Supreme Court held the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it refused to poll jurors. Therefore, the Court reversed the court of appeals and affirmed defendant’s conviction. View "Colorado v. Jacobson" on Justia Law

In this case, the Supreme Court reviewed for plain error a trial court’s decision to allow the jury unfettered access, during its deliberations, to the out-of-court statements of three child sexual assault victims. These statements were memorialized in three DVDs and three transcripts thereof, all of which had been admitted as exhibits in the criminal trial of petitioner Nerio Martinez. Martinez first raised the issue of jury access on direct appeal, arguing that allowing the jury unfettered access constituted reversible plain error. In a unanimous, unpublished opinion, a division of the court of appeals rejected this argument. Without deciding whether the trial court had abused its discretion, the division concluded that any error in not limiting the jury’s access to the exhibits during deliberations did not warrant reversal under the plain error standard. The Supreme Court agreed and therefore affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals. View "Martinez v. Colorado" on Justia Law

This case concerned the scope of a trial court’s discretion to permit, deny, or restrict the jury’s access during deliberations to a DVD containing the recorded statement of a child sexual assault victim, which DVD was admitted as an exhibit in a criminal trial. The State challenged the decision of a unanimous division of the court of appeals, which concluded that the trial court had abused its discretion in granting the jury unrestricted access to such an exhibit and that the error required reversal and a new trial. The State argued the division misconstrued Colorado Supreme Court precedent, and the trial court acted within the bounds of its discretion. The Supreme Court agreed with the division that the trial court did not employ the requisite caution to ensure that the DVD would not be used in such a manner as to create a likelihood that the jury would accord it undue weight or emphasis. By relying on an analysis that the Supreme Court later rejected, the trial court misapplied the law and abused its discretion. Moreover, because the nature of the DVD and its importance to the case’s resolution leave us with grave doubts as to the effect that unfettered access had on the verdict and the fairness of the proceedings, the error was not harmless. Accordingly, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals and remanded the case to that court for further proceedings. View "Colorado v. Jefferson" on Justia Law

At issue in this case was the third step of the analysis laid out in “Batson v. Kentucky,” (476 U.S. 79 (1986)), which required trial courts to determine whether a party raising a Batson objection proved by a preponderance of the evidence that opposing counsel exercised a peremptory challenge to excuse a potential juror on the basis of race or gender. Specifically, the Supreme Court considered whether the court of appeals erred in its review of the trial court’s Batson ruling by: (1) remanding for specific credibility findings of the prosecution’s non-demeanor-based reasons for its peremptory challenges, (2) refusing to credit the prosecution’s demeanor-based reasons because the trial court did not expressly find them to be credible, and (3) conducting flawed comparative juror analyses. After review, the Court concluded that the trial court here did not commit clear error in step three of its “Batson” analysis and that remand was unnecessary. The Court reversed the judgment of the court of appeals. View "Colorado v. Beauvais" on Justia Law

Defendant Emmett Larsen was the father of S.L. and the grandfather of S.L.’s children, A.H. and K.H. S.L., along with A.H. and K.H., moved to Colorado to live with Larsen. While in Colorado, K.H. told a therapist that her uncle, T.J., had sexually abused her. A Department of Human Services (DHS) caseworker interviewed both A.H. and K.H. During the interview, K.H. said T.J. had abused her but did not accuse Larsen of abusing her. A.H., on the other hand, told the caseworker that Larsen had touched her breasts and vaginal area. In a follow-up interview, A.H. again accused Larsen of abusing her. K.H. again stated that Larsen had never touched her inappropriately. Larsen was arrested, and the State charged Larsen with one count of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust as part of a pattern of abuse and two counts of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust. This case called on the Colorado Supreme Court to determine whether a trial court abused its discretion by refusing to poll the jury about whether jurors had seen a news report about the case that had been posted online and ran in a local newspaper. Here, the trial court gave repeated admonitions not to seek out news about the case — including just before the newspaper released the story. The Supreme Court found the trial court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to poll the jury after a newspaper published a prejudicial news report with limited distribution. The Court therefore reversed the court of appeals and affirmed the defendant’s conviction. View "Colorado v. Larsen" on Justia Law

Between 2010 and 2012, the Board of Education of School District No. 1 (“DPS Board”) approved and implemented innovation plans at eleven schools under the Innovation Schools Act of 2008 (“ISA”). Most of these schools were created to replace failing schools within the Denver Public Schools District (“DPS”). All of the schools were “new,” in that they had not previously been opened as non-innovation schools and had new names, new identification numbers, and employed only a principal and, in some cases, one or two other administrative employees, but had no students, teachers, or other employees at the time their innovation plans were approved. This case presented an issue for the Supreme Court’s review of whether the ISA precluded a local school board from approving an innovation plan submitted by a “new” innovation school. The Court held that the ISA did not preclude approval of innovation plans from such “new” innovation schools. Accordingly, the Court reversed the judgment of the court of appeals and remanded for further proceedings. View "Denver School Dist. v. Denver Classroom Teachers Ass'n" on Justia Law

Around 11:30 p.m., a concerned citizen (“the caller”) called law enforcement after witnessing a possible break-in in a partially developed residential neighborhood. The caller said he saw a person, later identified as Defendant Gonzalo Reyes-Valenzuela, enter several unfinished houses, leave one of the houses carrying a black bag, and use a light-colored, boxy van to travel between houses. The issue this interlocutory appeal presented for the Supreme Court’s review centered on whether an officer, with a reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal behavior was afoot, had to consider the possible innocent explanations for otherwise suspicious behavior before conducting an investigatory stop. Specifically, when an officer is aware that a person is driving around late at night, going in and out of unfinished houses in an area where there had been recent break-ins of unfinished houses, and carrying a black bag, is that officer required to consider possible innocent explanations before conducting an investigatory stop of that person? The Supreme Court held that, because Colorado and United States Supreme Court precedent does not require an officer to consider every possible innocent explanation for criminal behavior, the officers in this case justifiably performed an investigatory stop on the defendant based on a reasonable, articulable suspicion of ongoing criminal activity. The Court therefore reversed the trial court’s suppression order and remanded for further proceedings. View "Colorado v. Reyes-Valenzuela" on Justia Law

In July 2010, the City and County of Denver issued nine Notices of Final Determination, Assessment and Demand for Payment against various online travel companies: Expedia, Inc.; Hotels.com LP; Hotwire, Inc.; Orbitz, LLC; Trip Network, Inc.; Priceline.com Incorporated; Travelweb, LLC; Site59.com, LLC; and Travelocity.com LP. The Notices claimed unpaid taxes, penalties, and interest due according to the city lodger’s tax article, for the period from January 2001 through April 2010, totaling over $40 million. These online companies filed nearly identical protests, requesting hearings before a Denver Department of Finance hearing officer, and the protests were consolidated by stipulation. Denver petitioned for review of the court of appeals opinion reversing the judgment of the district court and remanding with directions to vacate the subject tax assessments against respondent online travel companies (“OTCs”). The district court had largely upheld the hearing officer’s denial of protests. Unlike the hearing officer and district court, the court of appeals concluded that the city lodger’s tax article was at least ambiguous with regard to both the purchase price paid or charged for lodging, upon which the tax is to be levied, and the status of the OTCs as vendors, upon which the ordinance imposes the responsibility to collect the tax and remit it to the city; and the intermediate appellate court considered itself obligated to resolve all ambiguities in the lodger’s tax article, being a tax statute, in favor of the OTCs. The Colorado Supreme Court found the “fair and reasonable interpretation” of Denver’s lodger’s tax article was that it imposed a duty on the OTCs to collect and remit the prescribed tax on the purchase price of any lodging they sell, to include not only the amount they have contracted with the hotel to charge and return but also the amount of their markup. The judgment of the court of appeals was therefore reversed, and the matter was remanded for consideration of the remaining issues raised on appeal by the parties. View "City & Cty. of Denver v. Expedia, Inc." on Justia Law

In 1990, after Denver determined that it needed a new airport, a group of citizens formed the Stapleton Redevelopment Foundation to develop the former Stapleton International Airport. The Stapleton Redevelopment Foundation created a master plan to convert the former airport site. In 1995, the private, nonprofit Stapleton Development Corporation (“SDC”) was formed to lease and sell the former airport property. SDC selected Forest City as the master developer for redevelopment of the property. Forest City sold the vacant residential lot at issue here to a professional home builder, Infinity Home Collection at Stapleton, LLC (Infinity), with whom Respondent/Cross-Petitioner Tad Rogers had contracted to build a home. When Infinity purchased the lot from Forest City, the lot was vacant, did not have utilities, and still needed to be graded to its final configurations. Rogers ultimately purchased the lot and the home from Infinity. The home included a foundation drain system designed to collect ground water into a sump pit and to pump that water into the yard by way of a sump pump. Because of the high water table beneath his house, coupled with calcite leaching from the recycled concrete aggregate base course used to construct the roads, calcite built up in the foundation drain around Rogers' house. In turn, this water and calcite buildup made his basement uninhabitable and caused his sump pump to run and discharge more water. This case presented an issue of whether contractual privity was necessary for a home buyer to assert a claim for breach of the implied warranty of suitability against a developer. The Colorado Supreme Court held that, because breach of the implied warranty of suitability was a contract claim, privity of contract was required in such a case. Here, because the home buyer did not have contractual privity with the developer, he could not pursue a claim against the developer for breach of the implied warranty of suitability. View "Forest City v. Rogers" on Justia Law