An attorney who helped Castle Rock avoid a $30 million lawsuit in a case in which three children were murdered has been hired by the University of Colorado to represent a campus police officer connected to the Aurora theater shooting.

Denver attorney Thomas Rice made headlines in 2005 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the mother of three slain children couldn’t sue Castle Rock police for failing to enforce a restraining order against her estranged husband just hours before he killed the girls.

The Court ruled 7-2 that the police had no way of predicting that Simon Gonzales would kill the couple’s children — even after a worried Jessica Gonzales called authorities seven times and visited with officers in person twice.

CU attorney Patrick O’Rourke acknowledged Tuesday that Rice had been hired by the university to represent a campus police officer.

ABC News, citing unnamed sources, on Monday reported that university psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Fenton had contacted a CU police officer with concerns about her patient, James Eagan Holmes, weeks before the attack during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” at the Century Aurora 16 theater.

Holmes, 24, faces 24 counts of murder and 116 counts of attempted murder in the attack that left 12 people dead and 58 others injured.

Rice declined to comment when reached late Tuesday.

The university also has retained attorneys Jane Mitchell and Richard Murray to represent Fenton.

Mitchell declined to discuss her representation of Fenton, citing a gag order that has been issued in the case.

Rice is a partner at Setner Goldfarb & Rice. Town of Castle Rock vs. Gonzales is listed under “notable reported cases/career highlights” in his biography on the firm’s website.

Jessica Gonzales sought to sue Castle Rock for $30 million, arguing that police officers failed to enforce a restraining order even after she made multiple reports that he had kidnapped the couple’s daughters.

In the theater-shooting case, it is not known what Fenton may have told the officer. Denver’s KMGH-TV 7News reported that Fenton had contacted university police for a criminal background check on Holmes.

University officials would not comment on the TV news reports, citing the gag order. The university’s acknowledgment of hiring attorneys for its employees does not violate the restraining order, said CU attorney O’Rourke.

“When university employees are involved in a legal process, we regularly retain counsel for them, even when their actions are entirely appropriate, so that they can have independent legal advice,” O’Rourke told The Denver Post on Tuesday.

The Post and 7News earlier reported that Fenton had contacted members of the university’s threat-assessment team to discuss her concerns about Holmes. The team took no action because Holmes was in the process of dropping out, 7News reported, citing sources.

In Colorado, therapists and their “institutions” are exempt from being liable for damages in any civil action for “failure to warn or protect any person against a mental health patient’s violent behavior” except when the patient has communicated a “serious threat of imminent physical violence against a specific person or persons.”

Denver attorney David Lane, who is not involved in the case, said police are also under “no obligation to take any action simply because someone reports something.”

“Just because she may have reported something to the police doesn’t mean they are on the hook for anything,” he said, noting the ruling in the Castle Rock case.

Attorney Larry Pozner, who also is not connected to the Holmes case, said the defense will probably pressure Fenton to reveal details about her client to bolster an insanity defense. If Holmes, through his attorneys, demands disclosure, the psychiatrist cannot invoke physician-patient privacy, Pozner said.

“I think we are going to have a head-on collision about that,” he said. “The defense will want to talk to the psychiatrist, and the university won’t want her to talk.”

Pozner said the defense attorneys “will be saying, ‘We want to know what you saw and when you saw it,’ ” he said. “But being a witness is a far cry from being a defendant in a civil case. We are an ocean away from that. Mental instability, by its very definition, is unpredictable. It will be important for the defense to develop the CU witnesses who saw Holmes starting to spiral down into what appears to be schizophrenia.”