In an effort to give greater access to practitioners and pro se parties who lack access to Westlaw, Lexis-Nexis or printed volumes of the Pacific Reporter, the Colorado Supreme Court has adopted a new way for parties to cite to Colorado case law. However, the citation format is optional, so that practitioners can choose to continue citing to the Pacific Reporter. No party will be required to provide parallel citations.
The Court's press release contains a helpful explanation of how the new citation format works:
A citation to an appellate opinion in the Pacific Reporter could look like this: Smith v. Jones, 45 P.3d 1237, 1254 (Colo. 2012). Under the new format, a citation to a Supreme Court opinion would look like this: Smith v. Jones, 2012 CO 22, ¶¶ 44-45, while a citation to a Court of Appeals opinion would look like this: Jones v. Smith, 2012 COA 35, ¶¶ 44-45. (These are not real cases, only examples.) “CO” means Supreme Court and “COA” means Court of Appeals. The “22” in the first example and the “35” in the second example mean those opinions are, respectively, the 22nd and the 35th issued by each court in 2012. Both citations point to the opinion’s 44th and 45th paragraphs.
