Source: https://cbaclelegalconnection.com/2018/04/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 11:49:04+00:00

Document:
On Monday, April 30, 2018, the Colorado Supreme Court issued five published opinions.
People in Interest of R.S.
People in Interest of L.M.
The Colorado Court of Appeals issued its opinion in People in Interest of E.M. on Thursday, April 19, 2018.
Dependency and Neglect—Admissibility of Evidence under CRE 803(4)—Indian Child Welfare Act.
The child was born prematurely and spent six weeks in the hospital. The Mesa County Department of Human Services (Department) sought and received emergency custody after the hospital reported that it could not locate his parents to take him home. The Department later filed a petition in dependency and neglect. At a shelter hearing, the court granted the Department’s request to return the child to his parents’ care under the Department’s supervision.
Three months later the court held an adjudicatory trial. As the sole basis for adjudication, the court found that the child had tested positive for a schedule II controlled substance at birth and that the positive test did not result from mother’s lawful use of prescribed medication. The court relied on testimony from a physician specializing in neonatal care who had cared for the child immediately after his birth.
On appeal, mother argued that certain test results to which the child’s physician testified were inadmissible hearsay under CRE 803(4). CRE 803(4) creates a hearsay exception for statements that are made for purposes of medical diagnosis or treatment; describe medical history, symptoms, or the inception or cause of symptoms; and are reasonably pertinent to diagnosis or treatment. Here, the testifying physician was qualified, without objection, as an expert in neonatology and pediatrics. He gave comprehensive testimony regarding the child’s symptoms and treatment and mother’s positive toxicology screen for methamphetamine. The physician’s testimony conformed to the requirements of CRE 803(4).
The court also rejected mother’s contention that even if the test results were admissible it was error for the trial court to rely on them because they were only admitted as the basis of the expert’s testimony under CRE 703, not as substantive evidence. The trial court admitted the results under both CRE 803(4) and 703 and they were therefore substantive evidence on which the court could rely to conclude that the child had testified positive for a controlled substance at birth.
Mother also argued that the trial court erred when it determined that the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) does not apply to this proceeding because the child had been returned to mother’s home. The ICWA applies to a child custody proceeding even when, following a shelter hearing, the child is returned to the mother’s home, because the hearing could have resulted in foster care placement. The trial court did not conduct the proper ICWA inquiry.
The part of the judgment adjudicating the child dependent or neglected was affirmed. The dispositional order was reversed and the case was remanded for the purpose of conducting a proper ICWA inquiry.
The Colorado Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Franklin Drilling & Blasting, Inc. v. Lawrence Construction Co. on Thursday, April 19, 2018.
Construction Law—Public Works Trust Fund Statute—Civil Theft Statute—Directed Verdict—Culpable Mental State.
Lawrence Construction Company (Lawrence) was the general contractor on a Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) road project. Franklin Drilling and Blasting Inc. (Franklin) was a subcontractor. Lawrence was paid in full by CDOT but refused to pay Franklin. Franklin sued Lawrence on a variety of claims, and all but the claim for civil theft were arbitrated in favor of Franklin.
Following arbitration, the parties tried the civil theft claim to the court. Franklin alleged that Lawrence violated the Public Works Trust Fund statute (trust fund statute). The trial court granted Lawrence’s motion for directed verdict, finding that Franklin had not proved that Lawrence intended to permanently deprive Franklin of the monies it was owed. The court also awarded Lawrence costs.
Franklin appealed the judgment in favor of Lawrence on the civil theft claim and the costs awarded to Lawrence. The court of appeals first concluded that C.R.C.P. 50 is unavailable when a trial is to the court. Instead, the governing rule is C.R.C.P. 41(b). Under that standard, the court must find that upon the facts and the law the plaintiff has shown no right to relief.
As relevant here, the theft statute, C.R.S. § 18-4-401(1), provides two ways that Lawrence could possess the culpable mental state required for civil liability: knowing use (C.R.S. § 18-4-401(1)(b)), or intent to deprive (C.R.S. § 18-4-401(1)(a)). On the knowing use element, the Court focused on the “res” created when the government entity (CDOT) pays monies to the contractor to be held in trust for its subcontractors and suppliers. When the res is exhausted before payment to the subcontractor, a violation of the trust fund statute, and perhaps the civil theft statute, may be established. Here, the evidence Franklin presented at trial established that at various relevant times the bank account into which Lawrence deposited the CDOT payments had a zero or negative balance. The trial court’s findings do not resolve the “knowingly uses” alternative mental state, and the trial court erred by not addressing this element of the civil theft claim.
The court denied Franklin’s request for attorney fees because it did not enter judgment in Franklin’s favor.
The judgment was affirmed to the extent the trial court determined that Franklin failed to prove Lawrence’s culpable mental state under C.R.S. § 18-4-401(1)(a). It was reversed and the case was remanded with directions for the trial court to determine whether Lawrence possessed the culpable mental state defined by C.R.S. § 18-4-401(1)(b).
On Thursday, April 26, 2018, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals issued one published opinion and one unpublished opinion.
Economic forecasts and policy solutions are based on predictions, and predicting is a perilous business.
I grew up in a small town in western Minnesota. Our family got the morning paper — the Minneapolis Tribune. The Stars ubscribers got their paper around 4:00. A friend’s dad was a lawyer — his family got both. In a childhood display of cognitive bias, I never could understand why anyone would want an afternoon paper. News was made the day before, so you could read about it the next morning, and that was that.
I remember one Tribune headline to this day: it predicted nuclear war in 10 years. That was 1961, when I was eight. The Cuban missile crisis was the following year, and for awhile it looked like it wouldn’t take all ten years for the headline’s prediction to come true.
The Tribune helpfully ran designs and instructions for building your own fallout shelter. Our house had the perfect place for one: a root cellar off one side of the basement — easily the creepiest place in the house. You descended a couple steps down from the basement floor, through a stubby cinderblock hallway, past a door hanging on one hinge. Ahead of you was a bare light bulb swinging from the ceiling — it flickered, revealing decades of cobwebs and homeowner flotsam worthy of Miss Havisham. It was definitely a bomb shelter fixer-upper, but it was the right size, and as an added bonus it had a concrete slab over it — if you banged the ground above with a pipe it made a hollow sound.
I scoured the fallout shelter plans, but my dad said no. Someone else in town built one — the ventilation pipes stuck out of a room-size mound next to their house. People used to go by it on their Sunday drives. Meanwhile I ran my own personal version of the Doomsday Clockfor the next ten years until my 18th birthday came and went. So much for that headline.
The period between 1958 and 1963 might be described as a Golden Age of American Futurism, if not the Golden Age of American Futurism. Bookended by the founding of NASA in 1958 and the end of The Jetsons in 1963, these few years were filled with some of the wildest techno-utopian dreams that American futurists had to offer. It also happens to be the exact timespan for the greatest futuristic comic strip to ever grace the Sunday funnies: Closer Than We Think.
Jetpacks, meal pills, flying cars — they were all there, beautifully illustrated by Arthur Radebaugh, a commercial artist based in Detroit best known for his work in the auto industry. Radebaugh would help influence countless Baby Boomers and shape their expectations for the future. The influence of Closer Than We Think can still be felt today.
Apparently timing is everything in the prediction business. The driverless car prediction was accurate, just way too early. The Tribune’s nuclear war prediction was inaccurate (and let’s hope not just because it was too early). Predictions from the hapless mythological prophetess Cassandra were never inaccurate or untimely: she was cursed by Apollo (who ran a highly successful prophecy business at Delphi) with the gift of always being right but never believed.
Now that would be frustrating.
As I said last week, predicting is as perilous as policy-making. An especially perilous version of both is utopian thinking. There’s been plenty of utopian economic thinking the past couple centuries, and today’s economists continue the grand tradition — to their peril, and potentially to ours. We’ll look at some economic utopian thinking (and the case for and against it) beginning next time.
Apparently timing is everything in country music, too. I’m not an aficionado, but I did come across this video while researching this post. The guy’s got a nice baritone.
Peter Thiel needn’t despair about the lack of flying cars anymore: here’s a video re: a prototypefrom Sebastian Thrun and his company Kitty Hawk.
The article is worth a look, if you like that sort of thing. So is this Smithsonian articleon the Jetsons. And while we’re on the topic, check out this IEEE Spectrum articleon a 1960 RCA initiative that had self-driving cars just around the corner, and this Atlantic articleabout an Electronic Age/Science Digestarticle that made the same prediction even earlier — in 1958.

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