Frascona attorney featured in The Colorado Lawyer
The January 2026 edition of The Colorado Lawyer magazine includes a feature article from Frascona attorney Jesse Witt.
The feature discusses a recent change to the judicial branch’s database of legal opinions that provides access to unpublished decisions from the Colorado Court of Appeals. The article explains how attorneys can use this resource without running afoul of applicable rules.
The Colorado Court of Appeals is an intermediate appellate court that sits between the local district courts and the state supreme court. The court of appeals publishes roughly 10% of its decisions each year, and these published cases create binding precedent that all lower courts must follow.
But what about the other 90%? These “unpublished opinions” often decide crucial issues of law but have no precedential effect. The court of appeals has also adopted a strict policy forbidding their citation in future appeals, except in very limited circumstances.
Historically, it was difficult even to access these unpublished opinions. The court distributed copies to a handful of specialty bar associations and would release them individually upon request, but there was no comprehensive database available where they could be searched.
In the 2018 case of Patterson v. James, 454 P.3d 345 (Colo. App. 2018), the court emphasized that the lack of a public database was one reason for the policy prohibiting citation of unpublished opinions. Nevertheless, the court clarified that litigants were allowed to cite unpublished opinions in the lower courts, so long as they provided copies to the trial judge and opposing parties.
In 2024, however, the court launched a new, free service that makes all opinions (published and unpublished) available to the public at research.coloradojudicial.gov. Mr. Witt’s article discusses how this creates both opportunities and challenges for practicing attorneys.
To read the full article, please click here: Colorado’s Unpublished Opinion Database.
Jesse Howard Witt is Of Counsel at Frascona, Joiner, Goodman and Greenstein, where he focuses his practice on construction and real estate litigation and civil appeals.
