Siddhartha H. Rathod

Glass, 22, of Boulder, was coming back from a geology trip to Utah with two knives and some rock hammers in the car, and he offered to throw them out the window; Deputies Andrew Buen and Tim Collins told him not to and ordered him out. He stayed inside with the windows up for more than an hour, making heart shapes with his hands, while officers from Clear Creek County, Idaho Springs, Georgetown, the Colorado State Patrol and the state Division of Gaming gathered, and a Clear Creek County sergeant who was not at the scene authorized the deputies to remove him. They broke a window and fired bean bags and a Taser into the car, and when Glass picked up a small knife, Buen shot him five times.

Rathod said, “Any of the seven officers there could have stopped this simply by saying something.” Colorado's Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act, in force since June 2020, had created a claim for the violation of rights secured by the Colorado Constitution, made an officer who fails to intervene liable, removed qualified immunity as a defense, entitled a prevailing plaintiff to attorney fees and required the officer's employer, with a narrow exception, to indemnify a judgment or settlement.

The settlement announced on May 23, 2023 came from four governments: $10 million from Clear Creek County, whose deputy fired; $5 million from Georgetown, whose marshal was there; $3 million from the State of Colorado, whose troopers and gaming officers were there; and $1 million from Idaho Springs. Clear Creek County agreed to dedicate a public park to Christian, chosen with his parents, to have a dedicated crisis-response team by 2025 and to train and certify every patrol deputy in crisis intervention, and Sally and Simon Glass would tell their son's story to its new patrol recruits. The state agreed to build a virtual-reality de-escalation scenario based on his death and named for him, and to open the bystander training of state troopers and Division of Gaming officers with a video in which his parents explain an officer's duty to intervene.

Idaho Springs's police chief, Nate Buseck, acknowledged that “lack of judgment, poor tactics, and lack of clear command structure resulted in the unnecessary death of Christian Glass.” Clear Creek County Sheriff Rick Albers acknowledged that his deputies had failed to meet expectations, that the lethal force was inconsistent with that of a reasonable officer and that the county's first press release “did not give an accurate description of what occurred,” and Georgetown said that every agency involved should have corrected it at once. In February 2025 a jury convicted Buen of criminally negligent homicide, and on April 14 Judge Catherine Cheroutes sentenced him to three years, the maximum. The family had fought to hold law enforcement accountable, Rathod said outside the courthouse, “and that's going to be one of the legacies of Christian Glass.”

Iwakuni

Rathod took a degree in economics and management at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1999, also studied at Queen's University Belfast and the University of Limerick, and served as a captain in the United States Marine Corps, stationed in Iwakuni, Japan; he represented his unit at the Cobra Gold 2003 peacekeeping summit in Bangkok and the Foal Eagle 2003 planning conference in Seoul. He graduated from the University of Colorado School of Law in 2007. He joined the Guantanamo Bay habeas litigation team, representing five detainees from Yemen, and from 2008 to 2010 was advisory counsel to a veterans' jail-diversion and trauma-recovery program. In 2011 he and Qusair Mohamedbhai founded Rathod Mohamedbhai in Denver, and that year he began teaching for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy; he is also adjunct faculty at the University of Colorado School of Law.

His cases have included Baltazar v. Vail Run Resorts, for two women harassed for more than a year by a supervisor at a Vail resort that threatened to fire or deport workers who complained, which settled in 2016 for $1 million and a bilingual monitor for five years, and Guzzo v. State of Wyoming, brought with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Arnold & Porter and the Cheyenne lawyer Tracy Zubrod for four same-sex couples and Wyoming Equality. On October 17, 2014 Judge Scott W. Skavdahl ruled for the couples, and four days later the state announced that it would not appeal.

Larimer Street

At about 1:30 a.m. on July 17, 2022, in the 2000 block of Larimer Street in Lower Downtown Denver, officers closed in on Jordan Waddy, who was suspected of carrying a gun after a fight; as he began to pull it from his waistband, officers fired, and Officer Brandon Ramos fired into the crowd. Six bystanders were wounded, five by bullets and one by shrapnel. Rathod's firm represented Yekalo Weldehiwet, Bailey Alexander and Willis Small IV; Anthony Viorst represented Angelica Rey and Ayla Bersagel, and John Lee represented Mark Bess. Video showed Ramos's light pointed the wrong way, back into his own eyes. At trial the lawyers had another officer describe how a flashlight should be held, then played the video of Ramos holding his backward, and the officer agreed that was what Ramos had done. Lawyers who had practiced for less than five years handled about three-quarters of the trial, among them Omeed Azmoudeh, who had deposed Ramos, examined him and gave the closing. “They were way more prepared than we could ever have been,” Rathod said. On October 17, 2025, after a day of deliberation, the jury found Ramos liable and awarded the six more than $19.75 million.

The Denver Diner

At the Denver Diner on July 12, 2009, Denver officers Ricky Nixon and Kevin Devine pepper-sprayed four women and shoved or pulled several of them to the ground, the women alleged; three of them were charged. A city HALO camera had recorded the encounter, and the footage did not surface for nearly two years, until the officers were fired in 2011. Rathod, with Qusair Mohamedbhai, represented Kelly Boren, Sharelle Thomas, Ana Ortega and Kristal Carrillo; the firm interviewed dozens of witnesses and reviewed more than one hundred thousand pages of discovery, and Judge William J. Martinez allowed their claim against Denver to proceed on its custom of failing to investigate citizen complaints adequately and on time. Denver settled for $360,000 before trial in 2013 and later overhauled its police disciplinary hearing system. The case, Rathod said, exposed “Denver's culture of police brutality and willingness to cover it up.”

Jamal Hunter was serving a sentence in Denver's jail in 2011 when other inmates scalded and beat him; he alleged that a sheriff's deputy had facilitated the attack. Rathod, Mohamedbhai and Arash Jahanian filed his federal suit in October 2012, and in June 2014 Judge John L. Kane, finding cause to suspect that Denver police had intimidated witnesses who planned to testify for Hunter, asked the U.S. Attorney's Office to investigate the police and sheriff's departments and their practices at the jail. On July 25, 2014 Judge Kane approved a $3.25 million settlement under which Denver hired an independent reviewer for the sheriff's department and the city attorney's office. That year Rathod, Mohamedbhai, Jahanian and Matthew J. Cron published “Municipal Liability: Strategies, Critiques, and a Pathway Toward Effective Enforcement of Civil Rights” in the Denver University Law Review, a study of claims against cities under Monell.

Moving Vehicles

Jessica “Jessie” Hernandez was 17 and at the wheel of a stolen car on January 26, 2015, when two Denver officers fired into it and killed her. Rathod represented her family; a use-of-force expert concluded that the officers had acted outside accepted police practice, and an accident-reconstruction and ballistics expert found that they were not in danger when they fired. In April 2017 Denver agreed to pay $999,999, directed its officers not to shoot at moving vehicles, stopped releasing the criminal records of people shot by police, and gave the family a seat on a committee advising the department on the use of force.

St. Vrain Valley

Shiva Rai, a young man with severe autism and little ability to communicate, could not tell his family what Monica Burke, an aide on the bus that took him to school, did to him over six months in 2016: she kicked and punched him, abused him verbally and sprayed Lysol in his face. Burke pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 months, and the driver, William Hall, was convicted of failing to report the abuse. Rathod represented the Rai family, and in August 2017 the St. Vrain Valley School District approved a $3.85 million settlement and adopted discrimination training for its teachers and employees; the family wanted, Rathod said, to “make sure that no one else has to live through a nightmare.”

Aurora

Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was walking home from a convenience store when Aurora police stopped him on the night of August 24, 2019; he was suspected of no crime. Officers tackled him and put him in a chokehold, and paramedics injected him with ketamine while he was handcuffed; he was later taken off life support. Rathod and Mohamedbhai represented his mother, Sheneen McClain, and on November 19, 2021 Aurora agreed to pay $15 million, $10 million of it from its excess liability insurance and $5 million from its general fund. The settlement came as Attorney General Phil Weiser's investigation of Aurora's police and fire departments led toward a consent decree, and after Colorado had restricted the use of ketamine in police encounters. Sheneen McClain, Rathod said, would “give away every cent just for one more day with Elijah.”