Colorado Landmark Legal Settlements
City of Boulder and others fight global warming
The city of Boulder was one of the first to join a federal lawsuit that led two major financing agencies to agree in 2009 change their approach toward overseas projects.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp., in an agreement filed in U.S. District Court San Francisco, said they would analyze fossil-fuel projects for their impact on climate change. The settlement was in a lawsuit brought by two environmental groups, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, as well as Boulder and several California cities. The plaintiffs argued the two financing groups needed to be accountable for projects that could contribute to global warming.
The 2009 decision came four years after a federal judge green-lighted the lawsuit. The 2005 decision is considered the first to say that groups alleging global warming have a right to sue.
Lawsuit against Columbine schools dismissed
A federal judge in 2001 threw out several lawsuits lodged against the Colorado school district where the Columbine High School shooting occurred. Lawyers for the defendants argued the school district should be protected under the state’s governmental immunity law.
The U.S. District Court judge said in his ruling the two teen shooters who perpetrated the 1999 massacre were the predominant if not the sole cause of the murders, as opposed to school officials.
Lawsuits against the parents of the two gunmen, and the three friends who helped them get weapons, were settled for around $3 million two years after the shooting.
Polluted arsenal to receive cleanup money
After 25 years of legal wrangling, Shell Oil Co., the federal government and the U.S. Army agreed in 2008 to pay damages for a defunct chemical manufacturing site near Denver.
Pesticides and Army-manufactured chemical weapons are among the products once made at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, which had been designated as one of the most polluted sites in the United States. Colorado cited damage to its natural resources, including groundwater and wildlife, in the lawsuit.
The $35 million promised to Colorado is considered the largest environmental settlement in the state's history. Cleanup began in 1985, and much of the property has been turned into a wildlife refuge.
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