This case involved contamination of a property in Durango, Colorado, formerly used as a rifle lens manufacturing plant by Brown Group and its corporate predecessors, and later by Plummer Defendants as tenants, with solvents including TCE that entered the soil and groundwater through plant operations and wastewater disposal. La Plata County, which acquired the site and built a detention center there, sued Brown Group under CERCLA sections 107(a) and 113(f)(1) and RCRA section 6972(a)(1)(B) to recover investigation and remediation costs. The court found Brown Group not liable under RCRA, but liable under CERCLA for a proportional share of past response costs totaling $694,787 (awarding the county $521,090) and future costs of $593,700 (awarding $445,275), while allocating 75% liability to Brown Group and 25% to the county on contribution claims. The allocation rested on evidence that Brown Group's operations from 1975 to 1979 were the primary source of the contamination, with the county bearing some responsibility due to its excavation and remediation decisions. Default judgments were entered against the Plummer Defendants, who had no assets to satisfy any award.
This case arose from a failed business relationship in which plaintiffs provided consulting services, funds characterized as either loans or investments, and leased commercial space to defendants, followed by an alleged but disputed settlement agreement after the relationship ended. Plaintiffs sued to enforce the settlement, for breach of the loan and lease agreements, unjust enrichment, and an accounting. On defendants' motion for summary judgment, the court dismissed the settlement enforcement claim because the alleged agreement violated Colorado's statute of frauds as it could not be performed within one year, and dismissed the contract claims against individual defendants Charnoff and Onit Solutions because they were not parties to the agreements. The court denied summary judgment on the unjust enrichment claim, reasoning that it is an equitable remedy independent of any contract and could proceed based on allegations that those defendants received the benefits, and also denied summary judgment on the accounting claim.
This case arose from an off-duty confrontation in which Arapahoe County detention officer Daniel Montana shot and killed David Rossiter after a brief fight that began when a cigarette was flicked from a passing truck onto Montana's car. The estate and survivors sued Montana for excessive force and wrongful death, and sued Sheriff Grayson Robinson for failure to train and supervise Montana, along with a familial-association claim against both. The court granted summary judgment to the defendants on the familial-association claim and to Robinson on the individual-capacity and failure-to-supervise claims, but denied summary judgment on the excessive-force claim against Montana and the failure-to-train claim against Robinson in his official capacity. It found genuine disputes of material fact about whether Montana reasonably used deadly force and whether the sheriff's lack of off-duty encounter training for detention officers amounted to deliberate indifference under clearly established law.
In this automobile insurance dispute, plaintiff Ariella Werden sued Allstate after it denied payment for medical treatment from non-authorized providers following a 2008 car accident in Colorado, where she was covered by a New York policy that included no-fault medical benefits and uninsured motorist coverage; her workers' compensation insurer had paid for some treatment but denied requests for alternative providers. The court granted in part and denied in part Allstate's motion for summary judgment on the breach-of-contract and statutory claims. It dismissed the Colorado statutory claims under choice-of-law rules because New York law governs the insurance contract and related performance claims. Summary judgment was denied on the breach-of-contract claim and the New York statutory claim because a genuine issue of material fact remained as to whether the expenses were 'recovered or recoverable' under workers' compensation and thus offset by the policy terms.
In Masters v. Gilmore, Timothy Masters sued prosecutors and the district attorney's office under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after his 1999 murder conviction was vacated in 2008, alleging misconduct including failure to disclose exculpatory evidence and destruction of evidence during the investigation and prosecution of Peggy Hettrick's 1987 murder. The court addressed multiple Rule 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss filed by the defendants, analyzing claims of unreasonable seizure, false imprisonment, and other civil rights violations in light of absolute prosecutorial immunity under federal law. It granted the motions in part, dismissing the unreasonable seizure and false imprisonment claims against several defendants with prejudice and limiting remaining claims to pre-arrest conduct or evidence destruction, while denying them in part to allow certain allegations to proceed. The core reasoning centered on longstanding due process principles requiring prosecutors to seek justice rather than merely convict, as established in Supreme Court precedents like Young v. United States ex rel. Vuitton et Fils S.A. and Colorado case law, which shield discretionary prosecutorial functions from liability.
This case involves Nicholas E. Duran's appeal of the Social Security Commissioner's final decision denying his applications for Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income benefits after multiple administrative hearings. The district court reversed the ALJ's April 2008 unfavorable decision and remanded with instructions to award benefits from the plaintiff's June 18, 2001 onset date. The court reasoned that the Commissioner failed to meet its burden of showing a significant number of jobs existed that the plaintiff could perform consistent with his mental residual functional capacity limiting him to simple instructions and no production quotas, as the identified jobs required level-three reasoning per the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and the ALJ disregarded prior remand instructions on this discrepancy. After seven years of proceedings, the court concluded that additional fact-finding would serve no useful purpose.