Colorado appellate courts adopt new case-citation format

"The Colorado Supreme Court has adopted a new way for legal practitioners and parties to refer to its and the Colorado Court of Appeals' published opinions in legal briefs and other documents. The public domain citation format will expand open access to Colorado case law by allowing practitioners and parties to cite directly to new opinions from the moment they are announced. The new format also will allow pinpoint citations by incorporating paragraph numbers. The new format became effective Jan. 1, 2012. Sixteen other states, including New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah, already have adopted the same format, which was recommended by the American Association of Law Librarians in the mid-1990s and is endorsed by the American Bar Association. The courts already provide online access to published opinions free of charge on the Judicial Branch web site. Before implementation of the public domain citation format, opinions issued by Colorado's two appellate courts were "slip opinions" which lacked a formal citation format until they were published in print in the Pacific Reporter. "The purpose of the public domain citation format is to make it easier for practitioners and self-represented parties who lack the resources to access an electronic research database or the printed volumes of the Pacific Reporter to locate Colorado case law and to cite to that case law in all levels of Colorado's justice system, whether in the trial or appellate courts," Chief Justice Michael L. Bender said....Practitioners and parties will be permitted to use the public domain citation format or to cite to the Pacific Reporter, and they will not have to provide parallel citations in either format...."