Colorado News

A bill that has been introduced in the legislature — Senate Bill 153, the so-called Sunshine in Litigation Act — carries the danger of severely damaging the state's business climate should it become law.

At a time when state legislators should be doing everything possible to encourage job creation, a bill working its way through the Colorado Senate unfairly paints employers as unreasonable and untrustworthy.

Gary Chodes is an investor, but it is difficult to say in what.  Chodes, who founded a Chicago-based company called Oasis Legal Finance, uses the courts like a venture capital market, advancing money to plaintiffs in lawsuits. When those lawsuits succeed with lucrative settlements or jury awards, Chodes makes his money back and then some. When they lose, he gets nothing.

Two nurses at Colorado's Aurora Medical Center say it takes enough time to get in and out of their hospital scrubs that they deserve to get paid for it. They're suing to be able to get dressed "on the clock."

Companies that advance money to plaintiffs involved in personal injury lawsuits are campaigning in state capitals for legislation making clear that their growing industry is not subject to usury limits on interest rates or other state laws that protect borrowers.

Fad footwear firm Crocs Inc. has won dismissal of a consolidated class action alleging that its current and former officers and directors knew there were problems managing the company's increasing inventory but failed to tell shareholders.

Attorneys general in 16 states and the U.S. government want to put a little distance between themselves and the rest of the plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation against BP PLC over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. They've asked U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans to separate their cases from the hundreds of lawsuits brought on behalf of businesses and individuals.