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Department of Health Care Policy and Financing Finalizes New Rule Regarding Colorado All-Payer Claims Database

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing has finalized a new rule after public comment to establish the basis for submitting medical and pharmacy claims and eligibility and provider data to the Colorado All-Payer Claims Database. The purpose of the rule is to facilitate the reporting of health care and health quality data. Reporting to the database allows public and private health care purchasers, consumers, and data analysts to identify and compare health plans, insurers, care facilities, and care providers regarding the provision of safe, cost effective, and high quality health care services in the state.

The new rule includes term definitions, reporting requirements, and penalties for noncompliance.

A hearing on the finalized rule will be held on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at the Capitol Center, 225 E. 16th Ave., 6th Floor, Denver, Colorado 80203, beginning at 8:30 am.

Full text of the finalized rule can be found here. Further information about rule and hearing can be found here.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: , , , , ,

Pro Bono Spotlight: Attorney Needed to Assist Client in Probate Case

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Metro Volunteer Lawyers is seeking an attorney to assist a client with a probate case in Arapahoe County. The client is being represented by MVL’s Lend-a-Lawyer who will be leaving in August. A hearing needs to be scheduled on Respondent’s motion to set aside the will.

Can you help this client? Please contact Patricia Trujillo at 303-866-9307 or via email.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , ,

CBA President’s Message to Members: Information Technology and the Practice of Law

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised by the subject of my inaugural President’s Message. I have long been an advocate for the use of information technology in the practice of law. From the relative obscurity of rural Western Colorado, I have traveled to such places as London, Honolulu, Toronto, and St. Croix to speak on various subjects within the broad topic of information technology and the practice of law. Maybe one message on this theme will be enough during my term as CBA President; maybe not. Time will tell.

Technology 101

My involvement with computers began in law school when I bought an original Mac. It had no hard disk drive. I bought the extra floppy drive so that we (I shared the computer with my wife Mary Jane) could put an application in one drive and our working file in the other.

After law school, I joined a firm that had bought new computers a couple of years earlier. A few years later, when that firm dissolved and I became half-owner with the remaining partner, we learned we needed to upgrade. It seems our predecessors had bet on CP/M becoming the prevailing operating system instead of MS-DOS.

In the mid-’80s, computers generally were within the exclusive domain of support staff. In our case, our assistants were the only people in the office who knew anything about using the computers we had. That struck me as impractical. It took only a few years in practice for me to realize that jury instructions were written on weekends or evenings, and major briefs or contracts were completed in the wee hours—precisely those times when support staff are living lives and young attorneys are not. The way to fix this, I reasoned, was for me to learn how to use these glorified typewriters. (Oh, I knew how to type; my mother had seen to that while I was in high school.)

When the time came to buy the new computers, I told my partner that I intended to observe the installation and setup with an eye toward gaining a basic understanding of how they worked. I was thinking along the lines of learning how to turn them on and off, and maybe—just maybe—how to create and print a document. Lofty goals, indeed! I learned that using Word Star to produce simple documents was like using an eighteen-wheeler to deliver newspapers door-to-door. Then I discovered WordPerfect 5.1!

Lawyers as Information Workers

It began to make sense for attorneys to compose and draft their own documents using a good word processing application. Early on, though, personal computers had not matured to devices proficient at storing, organizing, and retrieving information. Access to Westlaw® and Lexis® was painstakingly slow and outrageously expensive, and the search tools were just plain hard to use. This was all about to change.

As personal computers matured, terms like “information age,” “information economy,” and “information super highway” began to appear in the news and popular press. The devices we originally envisioned to crunch numbers were able to do much more. As devices that could store, organize, sort, and retrieve information, personal computers were about to change the practice of law. Lawyers were becoming, in the lexicon of the day, the quintessential “information workers.”

The Business of Practicing Law

Jump ahead, from the early 1990s to the second decade of the 21st century. The digital evolution continues. Today, most lawyers and law firms use a variety of information technologies to conduct the business of practicing law. Some lawyers and law firms use more; some use less. The specific applications are not as important as bringing information technology to bear on various aspects of the professional and business components of practicing law.

What are the professional and business components of practicing law? I like to think of the professional components as including research, writing, and the delivery of work product, and the business components as including billing, bookkeeping, and calendaring. After dividing the typical law practice into these components, we can look at how information technology can be brought to bear on each aspect of a law practice.

Billing and Bookkeeping

In a law practice, billing and bookkeeping are areas where electronic information technology has made paper almost—if not entirely—obsolete. This was one of the first aspects of the practice to “go digital.” The billing piece often includes the electronic recording of time spent on matters, using applications such as TABS, TimeSlips, PCLaw, or Billing Matters. Those time entries are silently and efficiently tallied by the hardware–software time and billing system. Then, at the end of the month, this office system generates the bills. After the bills have been sent, most of these applications can be used to apply payments received on client accounts.

These applications typically provide for trust accounting and can be used to transfer payments from trust to business accounts. Most, but not all, of these applications can be used to manage the business checking account. Some include modules that provide payroll functions. In the spirit of full disclosure, let it be known that I am numerically challenged, and billing and bookkeeping are areas that I try to avoid. So let’s go to another aspect of the business component—calendaring.

New Millennium Calendars

There’s more to calendaring than calendars. I’m told that Microsoft Outlook has a very nice calendar feature, but I’ve never used it. Don’t get me wrong, Outlook beats a paper calendar hands down; I just prefer a calendar that has been designed for use by legal professionals.1 Such calendars usually are one component of what are referred to as “practice management applications.” The big players in this market are Amicus Attorney, Practice Master, Pro Law, and Time Matters.2

Generally speaking, practice management applications focus information around cases or matters. Information can be focused around contacts, but matter-centric organization is the prevailing method. In practice management applications, records are created for each matter handled by the firm. Then, other records created in the application are linked or related to the matter. For example, let’s say you have a matter that you call Smith v. Jones. You can associate contact records with that matter. Contact records would be your address book; however, if I am opposing counsel, I’m not just a name in your address book—you associate me with the matter. The same goes for other contacts that might be associated with the matter, including the client, opposing party, judge, referral source, and co-counsel. Most practice management applications allow you to customize the records so you can create as many relationship categories as your practice may require. That’s not all!

The calendar in a practice management application can link events to matters. Events are occurrences—things you attend, not deadlines. As event entries are made on the calendar, they can be linked to the appropriate matter. Deadlines are typically represented by “to-do” records—that is, the application has a form to complete that includes:

  • the due date
  • as many reminders as you want
  • the type of deadline (in my firm, we keep it simple: there are internal deadlines for things we have to do and external deadlines for things people outside the firm have to do)
  • the subject or what it is you have (or someone else has) to do
  • to whom it is due
  • enough customizable fields to satisfy the needs of the most compulsive practitioner.

Of course, deadlines or to-do records are linked to matter records. That means that you can go to the main matter record and see all of the events and to-do items that are associated with that matter.

Making and Creating Notes and E-mail Applications

Practice management applications do more than connect the dots between matters, people, events, and deadlines. Most include tools for making notes that can be associated with a matter. Likewise, most include a special tool for creating notes for telephone calls. No more of those little pink “While You Were Out” notepads to be lost or misplaced. There are other “special” records that these applications offer that can be linked or associated with matters, but the most valuable feature, in my opinion, is the ability to link electronic mail messages to specific matters.

E-mail has become a generally accepted mode of communication. Practice management applications allow you to connect e-mail messages to matters. When messages are connected to matters, they can be removed from the in-box. When matters are closed, the e-mail message records are included in the archive.

Legal Research

The move to electronically based legal research was essentially forced on many Colorado lawyers. Local law libraries—no longer supported by the state judicial branch—closed. Few, if any, counties can afford to maintain such libraries. That means if you want to look at an ALR annotation or a case from the Southeastern Reporter, you either find it online or travel to the Front Range to use hard copies in libraries there.

As local law libraries began closing in large numbers, the CBA stepped up and offered the Casemaker legal research library as a free benefit to its members.3 Initially, Casemaker provided most of what most lawyers needed—basic statutes and about fifty years of case law. Today, Casemaker is a much more robust research tool that effectively competes with LexisNexis and Westlaw. Regardless of which research tool a lawyer uses, though, the fact remains that electronically based research has become the norm for most lawyers.

It’s a Digital World

The systems that most law firms use to create documents went digital before the turn of the century. I expect there are very few lawyers who do not use a computer and software to prepare documents. Even if the lawyer does not do the drafting at the keyboard, he or she has staff with computer skills. Just as you likely would not hire an accountant who still uses a manual adding machine, clients likely will not employ lawyers who still use typewriters and carbon paper.

E-Filing and the Paperless Office

If most lawyers are in fact preparing documents digitally, then why would they bother to convert them from electronic media to paper for storage? This question becomes more perplexing when you consider that most courts have mandated electronic filing. In the Colorado Judicial Branch’s January 2010 list of “Mandatory E-Filing Courts,” only one district out of twenty-two4—the Ninth Judicial District—was not included. Think about it: in 2010, all documents in any given case were most likely electronically prepared and filed with the court.

Electronic Client Files

The courts are storing documents electronically and so should lawyers. The federal court uses the acronym “ECF” for Electronic Court Files. Lawyers should have our own version of ECF, meaning Electronic Client Files. When client files are stored electronically, they can be replicated on portable media and removed from the law office. In other words, you can back up your client files and take them anywhere you want. Floods, fires, tornados, and other disasters pose little or no threat to client files that exist on a variety of media in various locations. Access to electronic files can be secured as well as, if not better than, their paper counterparts. (However, like non-archive quality paper records, storage media can degrade over time, so a variety of media should be used.) Additionally, electronic client files can be accessed more efficiently than paper files and cost far less to store. More efficient and costs less—sounds promising.

Work-Product Delivery

The final component to consider in the professional law practice is how lawyers deliver their work product. As mentioned above, for those who file documents with courts, the preferred—if not mandatory—method of delivery has become electronic. Traditional written-on-paper work product, such as attorney–client and attorney–attorney communications, frequently are delivered electronically. When the substance of the communication requires more formality than e-mail, many lawyers prepare traditional letters or memoranda that are delivered electronically.

Live presentations of information often are enhanced through the use of electronic information technology. Trials with electronically presented evidence move more quickly and are easier for all participants to follow. Complex matters can be explained to clients more effectively using a digital projector and presentation software such as Microsoft PowerPoint. The trend of delivering information electronically, whether in static documents or live presentations, certainly will continue.

Electronic Information Technology—Here to Stay

Many lawyers and law firms make good use of electronic information technology. Many more could improve their bottom lines and the service provided to clients by making better use of technology. The tools for working with information will continue to evolve. How we find the law and where we find it will continue to change. The technology we use today will become the mimeograph and carbon paper of tomorrow. In the meantime, courts and clients will continue to insist that we deliver our work product in the most efficient and effective ways. Legal professionals need to stay in step with the evolution of information technology.

Notes

  1. See www.tabs3.com/press_articles/practice-management_whitepaper.pdf.
  2. All of these applications were developed by small companies. Today, LexisNexis owns Time Matters (and PCLaw and Billing Matters), and West owns Pro Law. Amicus still is owned by Gavel & Gown Software, and Practice Master remains the property of its developer, Software Technology, Inc. (which also owns TABS).
  3. Casemaker is available through the CBA home page at www.cobar.org. CBA members who have questions may call Reba Nance at (303) 860-1115 or toll-free in-state, (800) 332-6736.
  4. See www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/File/Mandatory%20E-File%20Courts%202010.pdf.

The Colorado Lawyer, the official publication of the Colorado Bar Association, serves as an informational and educational resource to improve the practice of law. When you see the logo, you’re reading an article from The Colorado Lawyer. CBA members can also still read the full issue online at cobar.org/tcl.

Filed Under: Practice Management Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Philip Gordon: “Social Checks” Come of Age — What Does It Mean for Employers?

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a letter closing its investigation into whether an “Internet and social media background screening service used by employers in pre-employment background screening” complied with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). At first blush, the letter appears to be a non-event. The FTC did not impose a penalty but also admonished that its “action is not to be construed as a determination that a violation may not have occurred.” While not much can be drawn from this equivocal result, the FTC’s letter does contain the following important conclusion: the “social check” service in question, known as Social Intelligence, “is a consumer reporting agency because it assembles or evaluates consumer report information that is furnished to third parties that use such information as a factor in establishing a consumer’s eligibility for employment.” Put into plain English, employers that rely on a social check service, like Social Intelligence, to search social media for information about job candidates must comply with the FCRA.

This conclusion likely will have an impact on a substantial number of employers. According to a recent study by the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM), more than 50% of employers are relying on social media for recruitment purposes, up from 34% in 2008, and another 20% plan to use social media for recruiting in the future. The SHRM study does not address the percentage of employers that conduct these searches exclusively in-house, in which case the FCRA would not apply, as compared to those that rely on a third-party service, in which case the FCRA likely would apply. However, the fact that the social check space is beginning to fill with new enterprises, like Social Intelligence, suggests that the number of employers that are relying on third parties to conduct social checks has grown significantly.

When the FCRA does apply, employers will need to take the following steps vis-à-vis any applicant who is the subject of a social check. First, review the notice and authorization currently provided to applicants before more traditional background checks are conducted to ensure that those documents encompass social media searches. Second, ensure that applicants who may be eliminated from consideration based in whole or in part on the results of a social check receive a pre-adverse action notice which provides the applicant with the report received by the employer, the FTC’s “A Summary Of Your Rights Under the FCRA,” and an opportunity to dispute the apparently adverse information with the service provider which ran the social check. Third, upon rejecting the applicant, send a final adverse action notice to the applicant containing the language required by the FCRA.

These legal compliance requirements are straightforward enough, but they, and in particular, the pre-adverse action notice requirement, highlight vexing practical issues: What social media information should be reported in the first place? Is the information relevant to the hiring decision? Is the information reliable? There can be no question that social media posts may contain information that employers may not lawfully consider when vetting an applicant, such as disability, protected and lawful off-duty conduct, or genetic information. There also can be no question that social media posts often contain information that warrants rejection of a candidate. According to a recent study by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, more than 40% of respondents had disciplined an employee based on his or her social media conduct. However, these two groups of information set only the polar extremes; employers still must determine what, if anything, will be reported concerning the vast range of social media content falling in the middle and how they will fairly evaluate that information. Social Intelligence, for example, notes on its Web site that its customer set-up tools leave to the employer responsibility for “defining screening filters (for evaluating individuals) and redaction criteria (for censoring information).”

Reliability is another critical issue for employers using social media to evaluate job candidates. In the case of more traditional pre-employment screening, the nature of the information itself engenders a higher probability, albeit not certainty, that information is accurate. Court systems, educational institutions, and employers, for example, have an inherent interest in maintaining accurate records for their own legitimate business purposes. By contrast, social media are replete with false, doctored, and biased information about others. Social Intelligence suggests a solution to this issue by noting on its Web site that it reports “only information the applicant has created himself.” However, completely eliminating social media information posted by third persons arguably reduces the effectiveness of a social check to some extent. Perhaps more importantly, social media posts apparently created by the author can be forged. I have recently counseled clients on two separate occasions where employees denied having posted on their Facebook wall negative information about the employer or co-workers, credibly claiming that others had stolen their log-in credentials or hacked into their account.

The absence of any inherent reliability in most social media information emphasizes the importance of providing applicants with a pre-adverse notice even when there is no legal obligation to do so. Employers easily could lose potentially outstanding employees by relying on social media content that is false, misleading or inaccurate. Even if apparently adverse information turns out to be accurate and true, the applicant’s explanation of that information could demonstrate maturity and honesty as opposed to evasiveness and bad character.

With use of social media for hiring becoming increasingly common, human resources professionals and in-house employment counsel need to scrutinize their organization’s use, or potential use, of this new tool and answer several challenging questions. Most importantly, how should social checks supplement more traditional means of vetting applicants’ credentials and pre-employment screening for adverse information? What types of information does the organization need and how will that information be weighted? Next, will the information be gathered through in-house resources or an external service provider, such as Social Intelligence? If the latter, how will FCRA compliance be worked into the social check process? Finally, particularly given the newness of social checks, employers should evaluate them at least annually with one key question in mind: Have the social checks improved the effectiveness of the organization’s hiring process and the quality of new hires?

Philip L. Gordon is the Chair of Littler Mendelson’s Privacy and Data Protection Practice Group. He has years of experience litigating privacy-based claims and counseling clients on all aspects of workplace privacy. He blogs at Littler’s Workplace Privacy Counsel, where this post originally appeared on July 11, 2011.
Filed Under: Legislation Tagged With: , , ,

Matthew Spengler: Review of the Colorado Supreme Court’s 2010-11 Term

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Colorado Supreme Court’s term 2010-2011 recently concluded.  The Court does not hear oral argument during the months of July and August and it generally refrains from issuing opinions during this time, although it does continue to rule on cert petitions and C.A.R. 21 petitions.

The most recent term was one of significant change to the Court.  After twelve years, the Court elected a new chief justice when Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey retired and Justice Michael Bender was elevated to the position.  On December 10th, Justice Monica Marquez was sworn in as a new associate justice.

The Court issued 86 opinions during this most recent term.  Looking at the composition of the Court’s docket: 52 (60%) of the opinions were appeals of judgments entered by Colo. Court of Appeals; 8 (9%) of the opinions were appeals from the water courts; 10 (11.5%) were appeals pursuant to C.A.R. 21; 13 (15%) were interlocutory appeals from the district court; 1 was an interlocutory appeal from a county court; and 2 opinions involved the Court’s oversight of the legal profession.

49 (57%) of the Court’s opinions were unanimous.  Historically, the Court has manifested an ideological split between four liberal justices — Mullarkey, Hobbs, Bender, and Martinez — and three conservative justices — Rice, Eid, and Coats.  Earlier this term, my co-blogger Peter Krumholz speculated as to how the retirement of Chief Justice Mullarkey, and the addition of Justice Marquez, might affect the Court’s ideological breakdown.

For this most recent term at least, the traditional pattern has held.  The Court issued fourteen opinions in which three justices dissented from at least part of the majority’s decision.  Of those fourteen opinions, Justices Rice, Eid, and Coats were together in dissent nine times.

Turning to individual voting patterns of certain justices, this year’s majoritarian award goes to my old boss, Justice Hobbs.  He voted with the majority in 85 of the 86 opinions issued (98.8%).  In a single case, he joined a concurring opinion written by Justice Martinez.

Former Chief Justice Mullarkey participated in 27 of the Court’s opinions this year (through the December 13, 2010 announcements).  She voted in the majority in 26 of those opinions and joined one dissent.

On the other end of the spectrum, Justice Eid voted in the majority in only 61 (71%) cases.  She wrote, or joined, 21 dissenting opinions and six concurring opinions.

Justice Marquez voted in 52 cases during this term.  She recused herself from seven cases that were decided after she joined the Court.  She voted in the majority in 47 cases (90%) and dissented in 5 cases.

Matthew Spengler is an associate at Hale Westfall who focuses his practice on real estate and eminent domain litigation, as well as general commercial litigation. He contributes to the firm’s Rocky Mountain Appellate Blog, where this post originally appeared on July 7, 2011.
Filed Under: Case Law Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The 2011 DU Law Stars Annual Gala is Just Around the Corner

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The University of Denver Sturm College of Law Law Stars event is fast approaching. Earlier this year, the law school named its recipients for 2011, who will be honored this September. Since 1993, DU Law Stars has recognized distinguished alumni and faculty for their achievements at the annual gala, which includes a light-hearted, humorous, and personal commemorative video of each honoree, recounting accomplishments both professional and personal.

This year’s awards recipients are:

Howard Kenison, JD’72, Outstanding Alumni Award:

Kenison chairs the Environment, Natural Resources, and Climate Change practice group at the Denver law firm Lindquist & Vennum. His environmental practice focuses on regulatory and litigation cases before state and federal courts and administrative agencies. He is the former Colorado Deputy Attorney General in charge of Colorado’s Superfund Litigation Section and a past chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Environmental Law. He has been named to the Super Lawyers list three times, was the SCOL Distinguished Natural Resources Practitioner-in-Residence in 2010, and was named Law Week Colorado’s Attorney of the Year in 2009. He is recognized this year by the national peer-review publication Best Lawyers.

Charles “Chuck” Goldberg, JD’64, Alumni Professionalism Award:

Goldberg is a partner with the law firm Rothgerber Johnson & Lyons, where he has been since 1978. Prior to that, he worked in private practice for 10 years before being appointed (and re-elected) as a 34 year old judge with the Denver District Court. Goldberg represents plaintiffs and defendants in complex civil litigation, religious liberty issues, condemnations, professional liability actions, personal injury lawsuits, and probate disputes. He represents numerous religious organizations, colleges, and universities in litigation in Colorado and throughout the United States and regularly serves as a mediator and arbitrator. He is in his 11th year serving as chairman of the Colorado Supreme Court Board of Trustees of the Colorado Attorneys’ Fund for Client Protection and in 2010 received the Civis Princeps Award from Regis College and the Benemerenti (“To a Well Deserving Person”) Medal, granted by Pope Benedict XVI. Goldberg has also been recognized by Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers and Chambers USA for his excellent legal skills and outstanding service to clients.

Alan Chen, Robert B. Yegge Excellence in Teaching Award:

Chen has been with the SCOL since 1992, rising from assistant professor to professor and associate dean for faculty scholarship. A 1985 Stanford Law graduate, he is a nationally recognized expert in constitutional law, federal courts and civil rights litigation. He pursues research in a variety of fields, including federal remedies for civil rights violations, free speech doctrine and theory, and lawyering for social change. He has published numerous scholarly articles in national publications and serves on the University Strategic Planning for Research Task Force on Scholarship, and on the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) Accreditation Steering Committee, & HLC Acquisition Discovery, and Application of Knowledge Working Group. For the academic year 2007-2008, he was named Outstanding Faculty Member by the SCOL Student Bar Association.

Terrance Carroll, JD’05, Bruce B. Johnson Outstanding Young Alumni Award:

Carroll is a former Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives. He has been an attorney with the Greenberg Traurig law firm since December 2007. He provides strategic counsel and advice to help clients achieve their business objectives in an increasingly complex regulatory environment. He also represents clients in a range of issues related to election and campaign finance regulations. He was named one of 2010’s 50 Most Influential People in Denver by 5280 magazine; received the Power Book Industry Leader Award in Law from the Denver Business Journal in 2009; received the People’s Choice award as Best Lawyer Turned Legislator in the 2009 Barrister’s Best list for Law Week Colorado; and was named by Law Week Colorado as one of the Lawyers of the Year in 2008. He is an also an adjunct professor at the Sturm College of Law teaching Legislative Process.

The four will be honored at the gala event on September 21, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center. More information about the DU Law Stars can be found here.

Click here to register for the event. Click here for information about becoming a Law Stars sponsor and table sales.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , , , ,

Tenth Circuit: An Assault or Battery Committed by a Person in Custody on those Responsible for Containing Him Qualifies as a Violent Felony for Sentencing Enhancement

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in United States v. Smith on Wednesday, July 13, 2011.

The Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s sentence. Petitioner pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. He appeals from the district court’s application of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) to enhance his sentence; Petitioner alleges that an assault or battery committed by a person in custody on an employee of the Office of Juvenile Affairs is not a violent felony.

The Court disagreed. Petitioner’s “crime qualifies as a violent felony under the residual clause of the ACCA because the offense categorically involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” An assault or battery committed on a peace officer is not equivalent to the same act committed against any other person. An assault or battery committed by a person in the custody of the state on those responsible for containing him necessarily gives rise to the sort of “powder keg, which may or may not explode into violence and result in physical injury to someone at any given time, but which always has the serious potential to do so.” Therefore, the sentence enhancement was appropriate.

Filed Under: Case Law Tagged With: , , ,

Tenth Circuit: Unpublished Opinions, 7/13/11

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

On Wednesday, July 13, 2011, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals issued one published opinion and six unpublished opinions.

Unpublished

Amesquita v. Comm’r of Internal Revenue

Adams v. United States

United States v. Cortes-Regalado

United States v. Dotson

Olson v. AT&T Corp.

Abrams v. Williams

No case summaries are available for unpublished opinions. However, published opinions are summarized and provided by Legal Connection.

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State Judicial Issues Revised Form to Request Payment of Fees for Counsel, GAL, and CFI

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Colorado State Judicial Branch has issued a revised form regarding requests and authorization for payment of fees from the courts for counsel, Guardians ad Litem (GAL), Non-attorney Child and Family Investigators (CFI), Court Visitors, and Investigators. Practitioners should begin using the new form immediately.

All forms are available in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) and Microsoft Word formats. Many are also available as Word templates; download the new form from State Judicial’s individual forms pages, or below.

General

JDF 207 – “Request and Authorization for Payment of Fees” (revised 7/11)

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