An Ordinary Appellate Court Ruling In Colorado

This post is not about an epic rule of law. It concerns the pedestrian and hardly "sexy" question of whether a county government can have liability when someone is injured by falling in a county parking structure allegedly caused by its failure to warn pedestrians of a hard to see step. This was decided by the Colorado Court of Appeals today.

Law professors love using these kinds of humble cases for teaching purposes to teach law to students (both in law school and in undergraduate legal courses like business law). This is the kind of case that would be perfect as a very first case in an undergraduate course about law like one that I took, called "practical law" when I was an undergraduate student.

I mention it for several reasons.

First, the decision is a rare, but increasingly common one, in which the opinion is illustrated with photographs embedded in the opinion itself. This makes this opinion less stale than dusty old English or early American cases that are common place in law school textbooks, making it feel more relevant and real and modern.

Second, the opinion also has the modern system of case numbers and paragraph numbers instituted to free litigants of the copyright protections that might apply (although case law later held that it did not) to commercial pagination of court opinions. Familiarity with this system is important in legal writing and research. 

Third, the decision is notable because the trial court judge ruled against the government (in a decision affirmed on appeal) on the legal status of the government that built, operates and maintain the courthouse from which the trial judge was ruling works, in regard to a parking lot that is literally right outside the front door of the courthouse. This illustrates Colorado's wisdom in having state court trial judges who preside in county courthouses appointed by the governor with secure tenure, allowing them to be independent in the lawsuits against local governments that frequently arise in these courts, rather than being appointed by local officials or as an ordinary partisan or non-partisan elected office, as many other states do. It provides a starting point to talk about state constitutional law, and the practical aspects of the separation of powers and judicial independence with a concrete example.

Fourth, it illustrates the basic rule of law regarding when premises liability exists, as well as a notable partial exception to that rule in some cases where the government owns real property. So, one can teach the private property and public property rules for liability in slip and fall cases in a single case.

Fifth, the decision, like most appeals regarding a claim of governmental immunity of some kind, is an interlocutory appeal, resolving the issue of governmental immunity before the case is litigated or tried. This is permitted in order to preserve the benefits of being immune and thus able to avoid litigation entirely, and not just not a rule that leads to a lack of liability on the merits. The general rule is that civil cases can only be appealed once a final judgment is entered in the case. So, it is a nice way to teach this fine point of civil procedure.

Sixth, it holds as a matter of first impression not decided by any previous Colorado appellate court, that the waiver of governmental immunity for dangerous conditions in public buildings extends to parking garages, and can apply to design and warning issues as well as failures to maintain the garage property (e.g. failure to remove snow and ice, or to repair cracked concrete). In a classroom setting, the "black letter law rule" that the case announces is often the least important point, because the law changes over time and can differ from one state to another, but it illustrates how new black letter law rules are created by the caselaw system of precedents in the U.S. legal system. The twenty-four pages the opinion takes to reach its really quite narrow and straight forward conclusion also illustrates the kind of reasoning and that depth of analysis that is typical in civil litigation.

For what it is worth, I believe that the case was rightly decided and the result is what I would have expected in this situation before seeing the opinion, as a lawyer whose first job in Colorado was with a firm that had a contract with CIRSA (the county insurance pool) to defend county governments from tort lawsuits.