Justia Colorado Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

The court of appeals in this case upheld the trial court’s refusal to allow the State to withdraw from a plea agreement after respondent Christopher Mazzarelli pled guilty. The State sought to withdraw from that plea agreement when the trial court determined a more lenient sentence than the one the parties set forth in the agreement was appropriate. The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed, finding that because the statute and the rules governing plea agreements in Colorado, section 16-7-302(2)–(3), C.R.S. (2018), Crim. P. 11(f)(5), and Crim. P. 32(d) allowed the defendant, but not the State, to withdraw from a plea agreement when the trial court rejected a sentence concession after accepting the guilty plea, the State could not withdraw from the plea agreement. View "Colorado v. Mazzarelli" on Justia Law

Two men, one carrying what seemed to be a gun, broke into an unoccupied Colorado Springs home and stole roughly $8,000 in cash and other valuables from a safe in a bedroom closet. As it happened, the homeowner had a motion-activated camera in his alarm clock. The camera captured the burglary, albeit on grainy footage. The homeowner, who owned a video-editing business, enhanced that footage and then shared it with local television news stations, along with an offer of a reward for the “conviction” of the burglars. When the video aired on the news, someone identified the man carrying the gun in the video as the defendant, Kyree Howard-Walker. Howard-Walker was ultimately convicted of first degree burglary and conspiracy to commit first degree burglary, after a two-day trial. On appeal, he argued that his relatively brief trial was riddled with errors that, at the very least, collectively warranted reversal. The court of appeal concluded that those errors did not warrant reversal individually or collectively. In reaching this conclusion, the division adopted a new approach to cumulative error review. The appellate court sought more guideposts and, in so doing, crafted a two-step, multi-factor test based on precedent from federal circuit courts. After applying this new cumulative error analysis, the division determined that Howard-Walker received a fair trial despite the eight errors. The Colorado Supreme Court concluded the appellate court erred by supplementing the Oaks v. People, 371 P.2d 443 (Colo. 1962) standard. And under Oaks, the Supreme Court reversed because the cumulative effect of these errors deprived Howard-Walker of a fair trial. Accordingly, the Court reversed the judgment of conviction and remanded for a new trial. View "Howard-Walker v. Colorado" on Justia Law

The purpose of the "1940 Agreement" at issue in this appeal was to resolve the parties’ disputes regarding seepage and evaporation losses from three of the City and County of Denver’s streambed reservoirs located on the South Platte River. Under the 1940 Agreement, in lieu of making releases from the streambed reservoirs to replace seepage and evaporation losses, Denver agreed not to reuse or successively use return flows from water imported from the western slope and used in Denver’s municipal water system. Earlier litigation in Case No. 81CW405 established that this reuse prohibition in the 1940 Agreement applied only to return flows derived from decreed water rights from Colorado River sources with appropriation dates before May 1, 1940 (the date Denver entered into the agreement); Denver could therefore use return flows derived from sources that were appropriated or acquired after that date. The question in this appeal was whether the 1940 Agreement prohibited Denver from using return flows from water imported from the Blue River system under exchange and substitution operations that use water stored in the Williams Fork Reservoir under a 1935 priority as a substitute supply. In a written order, the water court resolved competing motions in Denver’s favor, ruling that Denver’s Blue River system water, which was decreed in 1955 with an appropriation date of June 24, 1946, was a source of water that was not owned, appropriated, or acquired by Denver prior to May 1, 1940, and therefore was not subject to the 1940 Agreement. The water court thus held that Denver could reuse or successively use imported water attributed to the Blue River system. Consolidated Ditches and other opposers appealed. The Colorado Supreme Court concurred with the water court, finding the return flows were not subject to the 1940 Agreement and Denver could reuse or successively use those return flows. View "City & Cty. of Denver v. Consol. Ditches of Water Dist. No. 2" on Justia Law

A condominium association, Dakota Station II Condominium, filed two claims with its insurer, Owners Insurance Company, for weather damage. The parties couldn’t agree on the money owed, so Dakota invoked the appraisal provision of its insurance policy. The parties each selected an appraiser, putting the rest of the provision’s terms into motion. Ultimately, the appraisers submitted conflicting value estimates to an umpire, and the umpire issued a final award, accepting some estimates from each appraiser. Dakota’s appraiser signed onto the award, and Owners paid Dakota. Owners later moved to vacate the award, arguing that Dakota’s appraiser was not “impartial” as required by the insurance policy’s appraisal provision and that she failed to disclose material facts. The trial court disagreed and “dismissed” the motion to vacate. A division of the court of appeals affirmed. In its review, the Colorado Supreme Court interpreted the policy’s impartiality requirement and determined whether a contingent-cap fee agreement between Dakota and its appraiser rendered the appraiser partial as a matter of law. The Court concluded the plain language of the policy required appraisers to be unbiased, disinterested, and unswayed by personal interest, and the contingent-cap fee agreement didn’t render Dakota’s appraiser partial as a matter of law. Accordingly, the Court affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals with respect to the contingent-cap fee agreement, reversed with respect to the impartiality requirement, and remanded for further proceedings. View "Owners Ins. v. Dakota Station II Condo. Ass'n" on Justia Law

The issue this case presented for the Colorado Supreme Court’s review centered on whether a trial court abused its discretion in permitting a police officer to testify regarding the results of a Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (“HGN”) test without first qualifying that officer as an expert witness under CRE 702 and Venalonzo v. Colorado, 388 P.3d 868 (2017). After review, the Supreme Court concluded that, on the facts of this case, the officer’s testimony concerning the HGN test was expert testimony under CRE 702 and that the district court therefore erred in holding otherwise. However, the Court concluded that on the facts presented here, the court’s error in admitting the testimony was harmless. View "Campbell v. Colorado" on Justia Law

The United States District Court for the District of Colorado certified a question of law to the Colorado Supreme Court. The question centered on proof of equitable estoppel. In 2017, a group of current and former exotic dancers sued the owners of clubs where they performed and the club owners’ corporate parent companies alleging the defendants acted in concert to wrongfully deprive the dancers of basic protections provided by law to employees. The plaintiffs contended they were misclassified as nonemployee “independent contractors” or “lessees” pursuant to “Entertainment Lease” agreements that identified the club-owner defendants as “landlords” rather than employers. According to the plaintiffs’ pleadings, the club-owner and corporate-parent defendants were jointly and severally liable for denying the dancers earned minimum wages and overtime pay, confiscating or otherwise misallocating their gratuities, charging them fees to work, and subjecting them to onerous fines. The club-owner defendants have successfully compelled arbitration of the plaintiffs’ claims based on the arbitration clause included in the agreements the dancers signed with the club owners. The corporate-parent defendants sought to do the same, but because they were not parties to the agreements or to any other written contract with the dancers, they had to find a different hook to compel the dancers into arbitration: that the dancers should be equitably estopped from litigating their claims against one set of defendants because they were in compelled arbitration of the same claims against the other set of defendants. The Colorado Supreme Court held Colorado’s law of equitable estoppel applied in the same manner when a dispute involves an arbitration agreement as it did in other contexts. Thus, a nonsignatory to an arbitration agreement could only assert equitable estoppel against a signatory in an effort to compel arbitration if the nonsignatory can demonstrate each of the elements of equitable estoppel, including detrimental reliance. View "Santich v. VCG Holding Corp." on Justia Law

While on patrol, a police officer heard a man and woman arguing behind the gate of a storage facility. When the officer called dispatch to report the disturbance, he was informed that a call had just come in regarding a possible domestic disturbance involving a man named Alexis Brown at that same location. Seconds later, the yelling stopped, and the officer saw a man walking away from the storage facility; the man was the only visible person in the area. The officer stopped the man and asked his name. When the man gave his name as Alexis Brown, the officer realized that it matched the name given for the possible domestic disturbance. The officer then ran a records check on Brown’s name and found that there was an active warrant for his arrest, at which point Brown was taken into custody; a subsequent search revealed methamphetamine in his pocket. Brown was charged for the methamphetamine possession, not the domestic disturbance. Prior to trial, the court concluded that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion to initially stop Brown, and it thus suppressed all evidence arising from the encounter. The State filed an interlocutory appeal. After review, the Colorado Supreme Court reversed: the officer had reasonable articulable suspicion that Brown was involved in an act of domestic violence. The matter was remanded for further proceedings. View "Colorado v. Brown" on Justia Law

Defendant Juvenal Onel Garcia was subject to a restraining order from contacting C.G. Almost two years after the issuance of the restraining order, Garcia allegedly attempted to sexually assault C.G. Based on events related to that criminal episode, a jury convicted Garcia of first degree burglary, attempted sexual assault, unlawful sexual contact, third degree assault, violation of a protection order, and obstruction of telephone service. Garcia appealed, raising two unpreserved claims: (1) the trial court improperly instructed the jury regarding the sexual assault charge; and (2) the trial court improperly instructed the jury regarding the force sentence enhancer related to his attempted sexual assault conviction. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court that any error regarding the sexual assault instruction did not require reversal, because Garcia failed to show that any error so undermined the fundamental fairness of the trial itself as to cast serious doubt on the reliability of Garcia’s convictions. Because the Supreme Court resolved this issue based on lack of prejudice, it did not reach the question of whether the obviousness of an error should have been assessed at the time of trial or at the time of direct appeal. The Court also concluded the force sentence enhancer did not include a mens rea requirement, and, therefore, there was no error with respect to that instruction. View "Garcia v. Colorado" on Justia Law

Richard Jones filed a habeas corpus petition in the district court challenging the Department of Corrections’ (“DOC”) calculation of his parole eligibility date (“PED”). Jones asserted that the DOC used only his latest 2008 conviction to calculate his PED, but, to correctly calculate his PED, he believed that the DOC’s calculation should include two earlier convictions from 1991. If his PED was calculated utilizing the 1991 convictions, Jones argued that he had passed his PED and was being unlawfully denied consideration for parole. His habeas petition included the mittimus for the 2008 conviction but did not include the mittimuses for the two 1991 convictions. In response to Jones’s petition, the DOC moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. The DOC characterized Jones’s failure to include all three of his mittimuses as a “jurisdictional failure which requires dismissal.” The district court granted the DOC’s motion and dismissed the petition. The Colorado Supreme Court found that noncompliance with the warrant requirement did not deprive courts of jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions. The Court overruled its prior cases holding that failing to provide a copy of the warrant of commitment was a jurisdictional defect, deprives the court of authority to act on a habeas petition, and requires summary dismissal. Accordingly, the Court reversed the district court’s order dismissing the habeas petition for lack of jurisdiction and remanded to the district court for further consideration. View "Jones v. Williams" on Justia Law

Robert Feldman ("Feldman") and the law firm of Haddon, Morgan & Foreman petitioned for relief from a probate court order requiring the firm to provide information to the special administrator concerning its representation of Feldman in a criminal prosecution for the murder of his wife Stacy, and to deposit funds held in its client trust account into the registry of the court. In response to the assertion by the special administrator that Colorado’s “slayer statute” applied to the funds at issue as proceeds of the decedent’s life insurance policy, the probate court determined that if Feldman were later found, in the manner prescribed by the statute, to be the decedent’s killer, he would be ineligible to receive those proceeds. Against that eventuality, the probate court found that compelling the return of the unearned funds in the firm’s client trust account would be the only way to protect the children’s interests, and that the court’s equitable powers permitted it to do so. The Colorado Supreme Court determined the probate court abused its discretion by issuing its order without weighing the considerations inherent in preliminarily enjoining the law firm from expending further funds in the representation of Feldman. In addition, however, because the slayer statute expressly protected third parties who receive a payment in satisfaction of a legally enforceable obligation from being forced to return that payment or from liability for the amount of the payment, no finding of a reasonable likelihood of success in attempting to force the return of the insurance proceeds would have been possible. Given this resolution, the Supreme Court found the disclosures ordered by the probate court would not have served their intended purpose. View "In re Feldman" on Justia Law