Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
In the underlying criminal action filed in Arapahoe County, Carlos Maes was eligible for a preliminary hearing on six felony counts. A magistrate presided over the hearing. According to the opinion, Maes argued the prosecution hadn’t carried its burden of establishing probable cause for any of the charges. But the magistrate, in ruling from the bench, orally found probable cause existed for each of the eligible counts and bound the case over to the district court.
Nearly three months later, prompted by a filing from Maes, the magistrate issued a signed minute order memorializing his probable-cause ruling. According to the opinion, 21 days after the written ruling issued, Maes petitioned the Arapahoe County District Court for review of the magistrate’s probable-cause determination. The district court declined. It found it didn’t have jurisdiction to review a probable-cause determination and Maes didn’t timely file his petition.
Maes then petitioned the Colorado Supreme Court under Colorado Rules of Appellate Procedure Section 21, proposing both the district court and the People of the State of Colorado as respondents.
The state Supreme Court held a magistrate’s probable-cause finding after a preliminary hearing is a “final order or judgment” under the Colorado Rules for Magistrates and is reviewable by a district court. The court also held the time limit for petitioning for such a review runs from the time the magistrate memorializes that determination in writing.
The Supreme Court made the rule to show cause absolute and remanded the case.
People in the interest of J.G.
During the 2018-19 school year, 14-year-old J.G. was an adjudicated delinquent for unlawful possession of a handgun and felony menacing. According to the opinion, his school responded by conducting a threat assessment and developing an Action and Intervention Plan. A few months later, J.G. was involved in a car theft in which his accomplice carried a gun. The safety plan was amended following that incident, and by April 2019, the final version of the plan required school personnel to search J.G. every day when he arrived on campus. He was searched in accordance with the plan for the remainder of the school year.
After the 2018-19 school year, J.G.’s mother withdrew him from Kennedy and tried to enroll him in a different public school, but he was waitlisted. Because school enrollment was a requirement of J.G.’s probation, she reenrolled him at Kennedy the week before the school year started, and J.G. resumed attendance at Kennedy on Aug. 27, 2019.
On J.G.’s third day at Kennedy, school officials told him he needed to comply with a search, as he had during the prior school year, because the safety plan remained in force. When J.G. refused to cooperate, the school resource officer seized him and campus security officers searched his backpack, where they found a loaded handgun. The resource officer placed J.G. under arrest and J.G. was suspended from school.
At the juvenile court, J.G. argued evidence of the handgun should be suppressed because school officials violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches. Specifically, J.G. argued Kennedy officials didn’t have reasonable suspicion to seize and search him; the safety plan didn’t establish his consent to be searched; and even if the safety plan did establish consent, his particular plan was no longer in place at the time of the search in question.
The juvenile court disagreed. The court concluded the safety plan remained effective, and it justified the search of J.G. on his third day back at Kennedy. Evidence of the handgun, therefore, wasn’t suppressed. After a trial, J.G. was an adjudicated delinquent for possessing a handgun as a second-time juvenile offender and possessing a weapon on school grounds.
On appeal, the division affirmed the juvenile court’s refusal to suppress the handgun. The division noted for public school students searched at school, the usual constitutional protections requiring a warrant or probable cause for a search are replaced by a standard of reasonable suspicion. The division applied the U.S. Supreme Court’s test from New Jersey v. T.L.O., which holds a school search is reasonable if, considering all the circumstances, it’s “justified at its inception” and “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.”
J.G. petitioned the Colorado Supreme Court for certiorari review, and it granted the petition.
The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed J.G. was subject to an ongoing safety plan established in April 2019. When he was searched on Aug. 29, 2019, the search was reasonable both at its inception and in its scope; the school’s need to maintain a safe school environment outweighed J.G.’s diminished expectation of privacy in his backpack. Admission of the evidence of the handgun at his trial was appropriate.
Essentia Insurance Company v. Beverly Hughes
Beverly Hughes was injured in a two-car accident while driving a vehicle owned by her employer and provided to her for her regular use. According to the opinion, the other driver was negligent and at fault. But that driver was underinsured, carrying a policy with bodily injury limits of $25,000.
At the time of the accident, Hughes was insured by two automobile insurance policies: one issued by Travelers Insurance and another issued by Essentia Insurance Company. Travelers covered Hughes’ regular-use vehicles. Essentia covered Hughes’ antique/classic cars, a 1967 Ford Mustang and a 1930 Ford Model A. Under Essentia’s specialty policy, Hughes’ husband was the primary insured, but Hughes was insured too.
Hughes recovered the policy limits under the other driver’s insurance. Additionally, she sued both Travelers and Essentia for Colorado Uninsured Motorist Coverage Laws benefits. She eventually settled with Travelers, recovering the full UIM limits under its policy.
Coverage under Essentia’s specialty policy was expressly conditioned on the standard policy remaining in effect without reduction of coverage or limits of liability, the opinion noted. Essentia’s specialty policy emphasized it wasn’t a “primary personal vehicle insurance” policy and Essentia reserved “the right to rescind, cancel and/or not renew this policy if at any time during the policy period” there wasn’t a separate standard insurance policy in effect for a regular-use vehicle.
After Hughes filed the lawsuit, Essentia moved for summary judgment or, in the alternative, a determination of law. It argued Hughes wasn’t an “insured” under the UM/UIM provision of the specialty policy because she was driving a regular-use vehicle, not one of the antique/classic cars listed in that policy, at the time of the accident. Hughes countered the regular-use-vehicle exclusion in the UM/UIM provision of Essentia’s specialty policy violated a state law discussed in DeHerrera v. Sentry Insurance Co. that ties UM/UIM coverage to persons rather than vehicles.
The district court sided with Essentia and entered summary judgment in its favor.
Hughes appealed and a division of the Colorado Court of Appeals reversed.
Essentia sought certiorari review in the Colorado Supreme Court and it granted Essentia’s petition and agreed to consider the following question: whether a specialty antique/classic-car policy’s “regular use vehicle” exclusion in its UM/UIM endorsement is enforceable under section 10-4-609 of the Colorado Revised Statutes where the policy requires the insured to maintain a separate policy for regular-use vehicles providing full UM/UIM coverage.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled because Essentia’s policy “limit[s] statutorily mandated coverage,” its policy is invalid and unenforceable. For that reason, it affirmed the division’s judgment.