The company that took away Jennifer Latham’s health insurance has had many names in the past 118 years. It began operations in Wisconsin as the LaCrosse Mutual Aid Association. By 1905 it had moved its headquarters to Milwaukee and evolved into Time Indemnity. Over the years, Time has absorbed other…
This week’s cover story, “You’re in Bad Hands” (click here for the main article, and here for the sidebar), digs into the story behind the whopping $37 million bad-faith verdict a Boulder jury recently awarded to Jennifer Latham, a mother of four who was severely injured in a 2005 auto…
In the absence of any explanation from the cops who beat him, local artist Eric Winfield has turned to social media to pose a simple question about the events of October 27, 2007: Why? That was the night the Boston Red Sox shelled the Colorado Rockies 10-5 on their way…
Seven years ago, after an emotional murder trial that was rich in incriminating circumstantial evidence but short on motive, a Denver jury found Hal Hebert guilty of shooting his wife Carol in 2001 in their Belcaro home. A key witness for the prosecution was an oddball named Richard White, who…
Four years ago, in a feature called “Over and Over Again,” I reported on the staggering number of nonviolent offenders stuck in Colorado’s revolving-door version of parole — and costing the state millions of dollars. Exhibit A was an alcoholic parolee named John “Jake” Johnson, who’d been arrested in 1999…
Last Friday, as six Boulder County jurors tried to determine punitive damages in the case of a woman whose health insurance company refused to pay her medical bills after a devastating auto accident, one figure loomed large: $150 million. That’s the amount that Time Insurance, also known as Fortis and…
Deciding on one of the largest punitive damage verdicts in Colorado history, a Boulder jury has awarded $37 million to a mother of four whose health insurance company refused to pay medical bills after she was severely injured in a 2005 auto collision with a meth dealer who was fleeing…
Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers has had her ups and downs in her efforts to obtain the death penalty for two Limon inmates accused of killing a prison snitch. Almost two years ago, Lincoln County District Judge Stanley Brinkley removed her office from the prosecution of one of the…
Davies loves a good debate. The avid Denver Post reader posted 624 comments in response to articles on the newspaper’s website during a nine-month period that started last February — an average of fifteen comments a week — on topics ranging from Afghanistan to global warming, campaign finance to Xcel…
Last Friday U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn threw out a plea bargain deal for former Rose Medical Center employee Kristen Parker, who admitted infecting surgical patients with hepatitis C through needles contaminated by her own drug use. No real surprise here: Blackburn is even more of a control freak than…
Just a few hours after touching down in Denver, after a week of performing emergency amputations in a makeshift operating room in Port-au-Prince, local surgeon Scott Burke was trying to catch up on his sleep and rid his mind of the grim images of the devastation in Haiti. Most of…
Recent Denver Post stories about increasing inmate violence at some state prisons have arrived just in time for the annual budget battle between lawmakers and the Colorado Department of Corrections — a nice bit of timing that should be regarded with a certain wariness. The DOC would like to open…
Prisoners send me all kinds of weird crap. I’ve gotten medical records sealed with toothpaste. Lists of DEA informants on toilet paper. Hair samples from a supermax inmate who wanted them tested to prove that the staff was trying to poison him. And lots of bad drawings, some even intentionally…
Based on early returns, the U.S. Senate race in Colorado this year is shaping up to be one gloriously ugly mudwallow, with GOP candidate Jane Norton painting the opposition as terrorist-loving pansies and the Dems firing back with clips that depict Norton as a Tea Party nutjob…
Amid a stampede of controversy over the government’s effort to remove 2,500 wild horses from their historic range in Nevada, the Bureau of Land Management has announced two more roundups scheduled for later this year. One roundup targets more than 500 horses near Ely, Nevada, and will leave a herd…
William Erickson, who passed away this week at the age of 85, will long be remembered for his remarkable 25 years on the Colorado Supreme Court and a host of other accomplishments. But he will also be known for his most abysmal failure — the Columbine Review Commission he headed,…
A couple of eons ago, I got my first introduction to hard labor as an ill-paid apprentice on my uncle’s ranch in southern Colorado. I herded and branded cattle, hauled feed, chopped the ice that covered the water tanks and pulled bawling calves out of the mud. It was brutish,…
Get in serious trouble, go to prison. Get into some bad shit inside prison — attacking staff, running heroin, or maybe somebody doesn’t like your gang tattoo — and you go to the hole, also known as solitary confinement or (in prison speak) administrative segregation. Reporting what goes on inside…
Senate candidate and former lieutenant governor Jane Norton is the latest GOP leader to blast Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s proposed energy reforms. The vitriol is pretty shrill — she refers to “new, draconian reforms,” as if the government was about to start beheading oil executives. Yet it’s also…
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar says his energy plan will bring more certainty to the way public lands get leased and drilled, but it’s hard to say who’s paying attention. During a teleconference yesterday to announce the reform package, many of the reporters on the horn were more interested…
Protests continue around the country over the Bureau of Land Management’s ongoing roundup of 2,500 wild horses in Nevada, including a rally scheduled for January 7 in downtown Denver. Groups outraged by the roundup, which they claim is unnecessary and is injuring and destroying horses, have released images of mustangs…
Grappling with a shortfall in government funding and a rising tide of people displaced by a wretched economy, officers and senior staff of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless will make some tough decisions this evening about what they and their needy clients can do without. Should it be the…
