[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 176 (Tuesday, October 31, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6888-S6889]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Nomination of Allison Eid

  I oppose the nomination of Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid 
to the Tenth Circuit. She is another on the short list of 21 Supreme 
Court nominees that the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation 
assembled for President Trump. She has now been nominated to the seat 
of the Tenth Circuit once held by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
  I am troubled by the dissents Justice Eid wrote in a number of cases. 
I asked her about one of those cases during her hearing. A 2015 case, 
Westin Operator, LLC v. Groh, involved a hotel that evicted a group of 
college-age, intoxicated friends into freezing weather one night. The 
young adults ended up getting into a car and driving away. The car 
crashed, and a person was killed. The family of Caitlin Groh, who 
suffered traumatic brain damage in the accident, sued the hotel for 
negligently evicting the guests into a foreseeably dangerous 
environment.
  Justice Eid's dissent argued that the court should have dismissed the 
Groh's family claim on a motion for summary judgment. She said that she 
saw no material dispute of fact in the case because she claimed the 
hotel video showed there were taxis in the area that the evicted guests 
could have taken. But the majority of the court saw the same evidence, 
the same video, and came to the opposite conclusion.
  The majority wrote:

       Video footage from hotel security cameras shows two taxis 
     in the vicinity during the general timeframe of the eviction. 
     No taxi is visible on screen during the time in which the 
     group exited the hotel and walked to the parking lot en 
     masse, but there is a police car parked at the entrance. It 
     is unclear from the record whether the taxis visible at other 
     times in the video were occupied or available for service, 
     whether any member of the group saw the taxis, and whether 
     the security guards evicting the group were aware if a taxi 
     was immediately available. . . . One of the people evicted 
     testified at his own deposition that he tried to look for a 
     cab outside the hotel but didn't see one.

  In other words, looking at the same evidence, the majority of the 
court could not reach the same conclusion. It is difficult to 
understand how Justice Eid saw this evidence as undisputed and why she 
wanted this case dismissed

[[Page S6889]]

on summary judgment--until you read the part of Justice Eid's dissent 
where she talks about ``the burden that the majority is placing on 
Colorado businesses.'' That appears to explain her ruling, not the 
facts in the case.
  In written questions I asked Justice Eid if she had also considered 
the burden the court's decision would place on these young adults and 
their families. She did not respond.
  This is one of her troubling dissents, but there were others. In the 
2014 case of City of Brighton v. Rodriguez, her dissent would have 
denied workers' compensation for a city employee who fell down the 
stairs to her office and needed brain surgery. In the 2017 case of 
People v. Boyd, her dissent criticized the State's decision not to 
prosecute a person on appeal based on a marijuana possession statute 
that is no longer operative. The cases go on and give ample reason why 
I do not believe this troubling record justifies Justice Eid replacing 
Justice Gorsuch on this important court.