LAW WEEK COLORADO

DENVER – Heather Schell joined Denver law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s bankruptcy and restructuring practice group as an associate.

Schell is a 2007 graduate from the Univeresity of Texas School of Law. Prior to joining Brownstein, she was an associate with Denver law firm Kutner Miller Brinen.

LAW WEEK COLORADO

DENVER — The Colorado Attorney General’s office filed a brief today with the U.S. Supreme Court in response to Kansas’ allegations that Nebraska violated a 2002 settlement concerning use of water from the Republican River. Colorado is name as a defendant in the suit, though Kansas didn’t make any direct claims against Colorado.

The Republican River begins in eastern Colorado and flows through Nebraska and then Kansas, where it joins the Kansas River. The 1942 Republican River Compact divides water use between the states. Kansas in 1998 sued Nebraska, also naming Colorado as a party in the compact; the case settled in 2002.

“I remain concerned that Kansas sees litigation as the best way to resolve issues on the Republican River,” said Colorado Attorney General John Suthers in a statement. “I’m especially troubled because Kansas unsuccessfully attempted to make this very same case before an arbitrator. Though the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately will decide whether to take this case, I continue to believe that here, as with all interstate disputes, Nebraska and Kansas can resolve their disagreements without subjecting all of the states to the costs and uncertainties of litigation.”

Colorado Response to Kansas Motion

A so-called Peeps expert, Anthony Novick, was allowed to testify Wednesday in a Boulder eviction case, explaining that — unlike other foods that would rot when left exposed in an apartment hallway — the sugar-encrusted treats “become hard and kind of crunchy,” the Boulder Daily Camera reports.

But Boulder County Judge David Archuleta put a stop to the so-called expert witnesses by barring the testimony of Virginia Unseld, a Gilpin County resident and former art teacher who earned a master’s degree in art education from the Rhode Island School of Design, the Camera said. He also prohibited the testimony of Erik Miller, a Littleton man who won third place in an annual Peeps diorama contest.

Novick was called to testify on behalf of Carol Burdick, who is in the middle of a three-day civil trial in Boulder County Court after claiming she was wrongfully evicted from her apartment over her Easter decorations.

Read more: Peeps expert testifies in Boulder eviction trial – Boulder Daily Camera http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_15363008#ixzz0rmxJ03O4
DailyCamera.com

Spectranetics Corp., a medical laser maker, reached a settlement today and will pay $8.5 million to end its class-action lawsuit and a stockholder derivatives case, the company said in a press release.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, alleged that Spectranetics broke federal securities law by making false and misleading statements and omissions. Those being addressed in the suit are shareholders who purchased stock in Spectranetics between March 16, 2007 and Sept. 4, 2008. This settlement dismisses the case; the company must also pay $350,000 in lawyer fees.

Spectranetics stands firm that it did nothing wrong.

By Alicia McNally, LAW WEEK COLORADO

DENVER – Colorado Attorney General John Suthers will not require 150 school districts to pay for an open records request for certain budget information, Suthers’ spokesman said.

The attorney general’s office says internal and public school budget documents are required for preparation of defense in a 2008 lawsuit filed against Colorado by 18 school districts and a number of parents. The lawsuit alleges that Colorado’s system for funding education is unconstitutional. The information will come from districts who aren’t parties in the lawsuit in order to get an accurate picture on how education budgets are done throughout the state, said AG spokesman Mike Saccone.

“We are merely putting together a complete picture of how we do education throughout the state,” Saccone said. “Anything that’s already publicly available, we’re going to get through free channels. But where their internal documents aren’t publicly available, we’re going to work with the districts to obtain copies. We’re willing to accommodate and work with every district on getting the information.”

Under the Colorado Open Records Act, the attorney general is required to pay for expenses for the request, such as employee time to gather the information and copying fees. The office has also offered to send staff to school districts to copy the required documents, or to retrieve the documents for processing and return them within a day. The average cost for each of the 150 school districts is around $2,000 and $5,000.

“There will be no net costs to the districts or the local taxpayers,” Saccone said.

Among the 26 criteria requested are annual expenditures and quarterly reports, but also for demographic information, “honors, awards, special recognition, or scholarships received by teachers, students, administrators, and schools.” Suthers’ Democratic challenger, Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett, has called the request “extremely burdensome” because it will create a distraction among daily administrative duties because districts will “have to stop and set people aside to gather this info.”

“It doesn’t matter to the tax payer whether the AG pays for the costs for this [discovery] or whether local school districts do. The bottom line is that school districts are being used to compile information for this litigation,” said the former president and treasurer of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education. “At a time when budgets are very tight in Colorado, there’s going to be a distraction cost to school districts by having to put personnel on this task. Even if the AG is going to pay for the copying costs for the documents produced, it’s still taxpayer money being used to compile documents for litigation.”

View a copy of the original opens records request here:

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Read more in the June 14 issue of Law Week Colorado.

Colorado’s former top real estate regulator is getting about $55,000 from the state under a resignation settlement.

Erin Toll resigned last week after a three-month suspension that followed a clash with a state lawmaker. The state released a copy of the settlement agreement this week in response to a request from The Associated Press.

According to the document, Toll will be paid $55,053.93, including $7,158.93 for time off she had accrued. The remainder is being paid in exchange for Toll dropping a lawsuit against her former boss and personnel board complaints over the way her suspension was handled. Of that, $37,895 is coming from the budget of the Department of Regulatory Agencies, where she worked, and $10,000 is being taken from a risk management fund.

Now that Governor Bill Ritter has signed HB10-1284, how quickly will we see litigation? Not imminently, attorney Jessica Corry reveals — but at least a couple of suits are in the works, Westword reports.

In recent days, Corry and some of her colleagues have met with the Department of Revenue’s Matt Cook, who’s taking a leading role in crafting regulations applicable to the new law. Via e-mail, she sings his praises: “While Senator [Chris] Romer and others were eager to push anything through the legislature, even when it resulted in more than 100 conflicting and ambiguous amendments being added to state law, Mr. Cook has demonstrated a cautious respect for the process and appears willing to sincerely listen to all parties involved.”

The city of Fort Collins has settled Timothy Masters’ civil rights lawsuit against the city for $5.9 million, City Manager Darin Atteberry said today, The Fort Collins Coloradoan reports.
“While Tim Masters has achieved some measure of justice as a result of this settlement, he would gladly trade all the money for the return of 10 years of his life behind prison bars and 10 years before that of living under a cloud of suspicion,” said his attorney, David Lane of the Denver law firm Killmer Lane & Newman.

As is the case with most lawsuit settlements, the agreement is not an admission of wrongdoing, The Coloradoan reported.

REED Group Chief Compliance Officer Marti Cardi at a Law Week Colorado-sponsored Women's Roundtable in May.

By Alicia McNally, LAW WEEK COLORADO

Strategies for selecting outside counsel to handle employment litigation matters vary, area general counsels and in-house attorneys say.

When they don’t have set counsel, legal departments in for-profit corporations tend to prefer a “mixed bag” of both full-service and boutique law firms when it comes to employment litigation matters.

“My decision will be generally based on whether the person I’ve worked with before or has good references,” said Marti Cardi, chief compliance officer of Westminster-based employment consultants Reed Group. “But I would definitely go to a firm that specializes in the area I need rather than a full-service law firm that happens to have an employment attorney.”

Variety opens up options for skills and costs, a concern among many corporate legal departments with tighter budgets.

Read more, including comments from Comcast’s Heidi Duston and University of Denver’s Paul Chan, in Law Week Colorado‘s Employment issue out June 1.

The 79-year-old U.S. Custom House construction is expected to be completed December 2012

The U.S. Custom House on 19th and Stout streets, which houses the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, is in its first months of renovations on its infrastructure.

The $23 million project will go to renovations of the 79-year-old building, including replacements of windows and walls, and updates to electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems. The Custom House’s energy usage will be reduced by 20 percent after the renovation’s expected completion of December 2012.

Most of the funds, about $16 million, will come from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The remainder will come from the U.S. General Services Administration, who acts as the “landlord” for the building, said U.S. Bankruptcy Court Clerk Brad Bolton.

Judges Howard Tallman, Michael Romero, Bruce Campbell, Elizabeth Brown and Sidney Brooks will have to move when construction begins in December near the court’s fifth floor location. Administrative offices will remain in the building during the construction process, but court proceedings will move into reserved rooms in the U.S. Courthouse Annex of the Byron Rodgers Federal Building across the street.

“It’s not so much that work’s going to be conducted on the fifth floor, it’s just that they cannot hold court with all the noise from construction,” said Bradford Bolton, clerk of the court. “For much of what we do, we have to have a record. The noise is going to prevent us from having a good quality record.”

The building’s six courtrooms will also receive technology updates. The $205,000 renovations, plus money for equipment, is separate from the ARRA funds and will be paid for by the court’s annual federal funding.

Read more about the renovations with insight from local bankruptcy attorneys Mike Pankow and Matt Ochs in the June 1 issue of Law Week Colorado.