The University of Colorado (CU) president announced his retirement, and the CU Board of Regents (Regents) adopted procedures to select his successor. After narrowing the search and interviewing several candidates, the Regents announced Kennedy as the sole finalist and ultimately voted 5-4 to appoint him.

Prairie Mountain Publishing Company, LLP, d/b/a Daily Camera, requested documents regarding the applicants for the CU presidency under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) and the Open Meetings Law (OML). CU produced documents regarding Kennedy only. The Daily Camera sued, and the district court ordered disclosure of the requested documents for the six candidates who the Regents interviewed.

On appeal, CU contended that only Kennedy was a finalist, and the district court erred in ordering disclosure of documents for any other applicants. The parties agreed that disclosure is required only with respect to finalists. Under CORA’s plain language, a “finalist” is a person who is publicly disclosed by the appointing entity as a finalist, and the OML does not specify the number of finalists that must be named. Here, the Regents announced Kennedy as the only finalist. Therefore, the district court overstepped its bounds in rewriting CORA to provide that the Regents had a mandatory legal duty to disclose the records of all six interviewees.

The judgment was reversed.

Claimant worked as a correctional officer for the Colorado Department of Corrections (department) and suffered a knee injury. The department admitted the injury occurred while claimant was on duty. Claimant’s authorized treating physician determined that he was at maximum medical improvement and the injury was permanent, and he calculated the net permanent impairment to be 13% of the lower leg. The department filed a final admission of liability based on the maximum medical improvement date and the impairment rating. Claimant challenged the physician’s methodology of “normalizing” the impairment to his knee because it had not been based on the third edition of the American Medical Association’s Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (Guides). An administrative law judge (ALJ) rejected claimant’s objection and awarded benefits based on the physician’s impairment determination. A panel of the Industrial Claim Appeals Office (panel) affirmed the ALJ’s order.

On appeal, claimant contended that CRS §§ 8-42-101(3)(a)(I) and -101(3.7) require impairment ratings to be based on the revised third edition of the Guides, and the panel erred in affirming the ALJ’s order because the ALJ allowed the physician to use the normalization process discussed in a Desk Aid published by the Department of Labor and Employment, Division of Workers’ Compensation (Desk Aid). However, the plain language of subsections (3)(a)(I) and (3.7) does not bar a physician from employing the normalization process, and the Desk Aid supplies guidance for doctors who are determining permanent impairment ratings. Further, the Desk Aid does not reject the revised third edition of the Guides; rather, it expands on the factors upon which doctors may, in their discretion, base impairment ratings. Therefore, the panel did not err.

            The order was affirmed.