The Complete Guide to Car Accident Claims in Colorado

Your complete Colorado car accident guide: deadlines, insurance, fault rules, settlement value, and how to protect your right to recover.

A car accident reshapes the next year of your life in a way nothing prepares you for. The crash itself is over in seconds. The calls from adjusters, the medical appointments, the missed work, the pain that doesn’t fade on schedule, the questions about what to sign and what to refuse, all of it lands on you while you are still trying to recover. You did not choose this. You should not have to navigate it alone.

This guide is the resource we wish every Colorado driver had on the day of their accident. We built it from the questions our clients ask us most, from the legal rules that actually decide cases in this state, and from the mistakes we see good people make when they trust the wrong source for information. Read what is relevant to you. Skip what is not. And when you are ready to talk to a real human about your specific situation, call us at 720-928-9178. There is no obligation, no pressure, and no fee unless we win your case.

In our practice, we represent people across the Front Range who never thought they would need a personal injury attorney. They are people who carry better-than-minimum coverage, people who research before they call, people who have something to protect. This guide is written for them. It is also written for anyone who needs clear, accurate, Colorado-specific information without the salesy noise that fills most accident-attorney websites.

What This Guide Covers

• The First 24 Hours After a Colorado Car Accident
• Colorado’s Three-Year Deadline for Filing a Car Accident Claim
• How Fault Is Decided Under Colorado’s Modified Comparative Negligence Rule
• Colorado’s Auto Insurance Requirements and What They Actually Mean
• The Insurance Coverages That Actually Pay Your Claim
• Common Injuries After a Colorado Car Accident
• Why Medical Treatment Decisions Make or Break Your Claim
• The Colorado Car Accident Claim Process Step by Step
• How Settlement Values Are Calculated in Colorado
• When a Claim Becomes a Lawsuit
• Special Situations: DUI, Hit-and-Run, Government Vehicles, and Out-of-State Drivers
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Sources

The First 24 Hours After a Colorado Car Accident

The first day after a Colorado car accident matters more than almost anything that happens later. The choices you make in those first hours shape the medical record, preserve the evidence, and decide how much leverage you have when an insurance adjuster calls.

If you are physically able, get medical attention immediately. Even if you feel okay. Adrenaline masks injury for hours, sometimes days, and the most expensive injuries we see, the ones involving the brain, the spine, and the soft tissues of the neck, often present with delayed symptoms. The medical record created in the first 24 hours is the foundation of any future claim. A gap of even a few days between the accident and your first medical visit gives an adjuster room to argue that your injuries came from somewhere else.

Call the police and get an official accident report. Colorado law under CRS 42-4-1606 requires drivers to report any accident involving injury, death, or property damage that appears to exceed five hundred dollars. The police report is not the final word on fault, but it is a document insurance carriers and courts take seriously, and getting one created at the scene protects you against later disputes about what happened.

Document the scene if you can. Photographs of the vehicles, the road, the weather, the damage, any visible injuries, and the position of the vehicles before they are moved. Names and contact information for witnesses. The other drivers insurance information. Your phone is the most powerful evidence-preservation tool you have, and the moments right after the crash are when this evidence is most accessible.

Do not give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurance company. Not on the day of the accident. Not the next day. Not until you have spoken to a lawyer who represents your interests. The adjuster who calls you is friendly, sympathetic, and trained to gather statements that limit what their company has to pay. You are under no obligation to give one. You can politely decline and refer them to your attorney.

For a complete day-by-day breakdown of every legal and insurance deadline you need to track after a crash, see our guide to every deadline that matters after a Colorado car accident.

Colorado’s Three-Year Deadline for Filing a Car Accident Claim

Colorado law gives you three years from the date of your accident to file a personal injury lawsuit arising from a motor vehicle collision. The statute is CRS 13-80-101. This is longer than the two-year deadline that applies to most personal injury claims in Colorado, and the difference matters.

Three years sounds like a long time. It is not. Insurance negotiations alone routinely take six to eighteen months. Medical treatment for serious injuries can extend even longer, and you generally cannot evaluate the full value of a claim until your treatment is far enough along that doctors can speak to your long-term prognosis. Build in time for negotiation, for discovery if a lawsuit becomes necessary, and for the unexpected.

There are exceptions and tolling provisions that can shorten or, in narrow cases, extend the deadline. Claims against government entities are the most common shortener. If your accident involved a city vehicle, a county vehicle, an RTD bus, a state vehicle, or any other governmental actor, you have only 182 days under CRS 24-10-109 to file a written notice of claim, and that clock starts on the date of the accident, not the date you decide to pursue a claim. Miss that 182-day window and your claim is gone, regardless of how strong it would have been.

Wrongful death claims arising from a car accident also have a two-year deadline under CRS 13-80-102, measured from the date of death. Property-only claims have a different timeline. The point is that there is no single deadline that applies to every accident, and assuming you have three years can be a costly mistake. If you are unsure which deadline applies to your situation, call us at 720-928-9178 and we will tell you, free of charge, before we ever discuss representation.

How Fault Is Decided Under Colorado’s Modified Comparative Negligence Rule

Colorado is a modified comparative negligence state. The rule that governs how fault is allocated, and how it affects what you can recover, is CRS 13-21-111. It is one of the most misunderstood rules in Colorado personal injury law, and understanding how it actually works gives you a meaningful advantage when an insurance company tries to assign blame to you that does not belong there.

Here is how it works in plain terms. After an accident, every party who contributed to the collision is assigned a percentage of fault. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. If you are found 20 percent at fault for a collision and your damages total 100,000 dollars, you can recover 80,000 dollars. If you are found 49 percent at fault, you can recover 51 percent of your damages. But if you are found 50 percent or more at fault, you recover nothing. The 50 percent threshold is the line that decides whether a case is worth pursuing.

This is why insurance companies fight so hard over comparative fault. Pushing your assigned fault from 30 percent to 51 percent is not a small adjustment. It eliminates your claim entirely. Adjusters know this, and the questions they ask in early conversations are designed to extract admissions that increase your share of fault. Speeding even slightly. Looking down at your phone for a second. Failing to brake one moment sooner. None of these admissions are required, and most of them, even if true, do not legally make you 50 percent at fault. But once an adjuster has them on a recorded statement, they become leverage.

In our practice, we see comparative negligence misapplied constantly. We have seen rear-end victims accused of stopping too quickly. We have seen pedestrians blamed for crossing in a crosswalk because they were “wearing dark clothing.” We have seen cyclists assigned majority fault because they were on a road where motorists did not expect them. None of these allocations are correct under Colorado law, but they happen because most accident victims do not know enough to push back. Knowing the rule is your first line of defense. We break this rule down further in our plain-English guide to Colorado’s comparative negligence rule under CRS 13-21-111.

Colorado’s Auto Insurance Requirements and What They Actually Mean

Colorado law under CRS 10-4-619 and CRS 42-7-103 requires every driver to carry minimum auto insurance. The current minimums are 25,000 dollars in bodily injury liability per person, 50,000 dollars per accident, and 15,000 dollars in property damage liability. These limits are written in shorthand as 25/50/15.

The minimums sound like real money until you sit with the numbers. A single trip to the emergency room after a serious crash routinely exceeds 25,000 dollars before you have left the hospital. A surgery for a herniated disc, a fractured pelvis, or a brain bleed can run into six figures on its own. Twenty-five thousand dollars does not begin to cover the medical reality of a serious accident, much less lost wages, future care, or the human cost of the injury itself.

This is the gap that destroys financial lives. The other driver hits you. They carry the legal minimum. Their insurance pays out 25,000 dollars and disappears. Your medical bills are 200,000 dollars. The other driver does not personally have 175,000 dollars to pay you. And the law says they only had to carry 25,000.

The solution is your own insurance. Specifically, the coverages on your own policy that protect you when the at-fault driver cannot. We cover those next, but here is the principle every Colorado driver should internalize. The minimum is not enough. It has not been enough for years. The drivers we represent who recover the most are almost always the drivers who carried more than the minimum on their own policies. This is one of the few decisions in life where spending an extra few hundred dollars per year on your own insurance can be the difference between financial recovery and financial ruin.

The Insurance Coverages That Actually Pay Your Claim

When you are hurt in a Colorado car accident, the money that pays for your recovery comes from a stack of insurance coverages, some belonging to the other driver and some belonging to you. Knowing what is in the stack and how the layers interact is one of the most valuable things you can do as a claimant.

Bodily Injury Liability

This is the at-fault drivers coverage that pays for your injuries. The minimum is 25,000 dollars per person. Many drivers carry 100,000 or 250,000 or more. Whatever they carry is the ceiling on what their insurance will pay you for your injury claim. If your damages exceed their limits, you will need to pursue other sources, which is where your own coverage comes in.

Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Coverage

Often abbreviated UM/UIM and governed by CRS 10-4-609. This is your own coverage and it pays you when the at-fault driver has no insurance or not enough. It is not optional in spirit, even though Colorado technically allows you to reject it in writing. Refusing UM/UIM coverage is one of the most consequential financial decisions a driver can make, and most people who refuse it do so without understanding what they are giving up. We have written extensively about UM/UIM in our deeper guide on uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage.

Medical Payments Coverage

Often called MedPay. This is no-fault coverage on your own policy that pays your medical bills regardless of who caused the accident. Colorado law requires insurers to offer MedPay with a minimum of 5,000 dollars, but you can carry more. MedPay is paid in addition to whatever you recover from the at-fault driver, and it does not have to be repaid out of your settlement in most cases. It is one of the most underappreciated coverages on a Colorado auto policy. For a deeper look at how MedPay and health insurance can both pay, see our analysis of the double recovery most people miss.

Health Insurance

Your health insurance also pays for treatment after an accident. The interaction between health insurance, MedPay, and any settlement you receive is complicated. Health insurers often have subrogation rights that allow them to recover from your settlement what they paid for your treatment. Negotiating those liens is a meaningful part of what we do for clients, and the difference between a well-negotiated lien and a poorly-negotiated one can be tens of thousands of dollars in your pocket. Our guide to medical liens, ERISA, Medicare, and Medicaid walks through the rules.

Umbrella Policies

An umbrella policy sits on top of your auto policy and provides additional liability coverage. If you have one, it can also provide additional UM/UIM coverage in many cases, depending on how it is written. Drivers with umbrella policies often have access to coverage they do not realize they have. We address this stacking question directly in our piece on excess and umbrella policies when standard coverage runs out.

Stacking and Multiple Vehicle Households

If you have multiple vehicles on your policy, or if you live in a household with multiple insured vehicles, Colorado law in some circumstances allows you to stack UM/UIM coverages. The rules are technical and policy-specific. We dig into how stacking works in serious accidents in our analysis of multiple coverages working together after a serious Colorado crash.

Considering calling? Most callers tell us they wish they had called sooner. Speaking with us costs you nothing. There is no obligation, no pressure, no recording, and no fee unless we win your case. Call 720-928-9178 and tell us what happened. We will tell you what we think, honestly, even if the answer is that you do not need a lawyer.

Common Injuries After a Colorado Car Accident

The injuries we see most often in our practice fall into a few categories. Each one carries its own medical reality, its own evidentiary challenges, and its own implications for how a claim is valued.

Neck and Back Injuries

Whiplash, herniated discs, bulging discs, and chronic cervical or lumbar pain are the most common car accident injuries we handle. They are also the injuries insurance companies most aggressively try to minimize, often using the phrase “soft tissue injury” as if that meant the injury was minor. Soft tissue injuries can be debilitating and lifelong. The science of why these injuries appear days after a collision, and why they are real even when the vehicle damage is minor, is well-established. Adjusters who pretend otherwise are not telling the truth.

Traumatic Brain Injury

TBI is the most underdiagnosed serious injury in vehicle crashes. A concussion, a brain bleed, or a diffuse axonal injury can occur in a crash where the head never visibly strikes anything. The brain decelerates inside the skull and the damage is invisible on basic imaging. The symptoms, headaches, fatigue, mood changes, memory problems, light sensitivity, can be life-altering and permanent. TBI cases require specialized neuropsychological testing, neurological evaluation, and often long-term care planning. They are also among the highest-value cases we handle.

Spinal Cord Injury

Catastrophic spinal cord injuries result in lifetime care needs. The financial and human cost is enormous. Settlements and verdicts in these cases must account for decades of medical care, equipment, home modifications, lost earning capacity, and the pain and loss of life experience the injury imposes. Calculating these damages is technical work, and getting it wrong leaves families short for the rest of their lives. Our deeper resource on long-term spinal cord injury costs and what Colorado law provides walks through how these cases are valued.

Fractures and Orthopedic Injuries

Broken bones, especially fractures involving joints, the pelvis, or weight-bearing surfaces, often require surgery and long recovery. Even injuries that “heal” can leave permanent limitations on what a person can do.

Internal Injuries

Damage to organs, internal bleeding, and abdominal trauma may not be apparent at the scene but are immediately life-threatening. Anyone in a serious crash should have a thorough emergency evaluation regardless of how they feel.

Psychological Injuries

Post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, and the loss of confidence behind the wheel are real injuries with real treatment costs. Colorado law recognizes psychological injuries as compensable damages, and our claims include them where they exist.

Why Medical Treatment Decisions Make or Break Your Claim

The medical record is the spine of your case. Every gap in treatment, every missed appointment, every conflicting note in a chart can be used by an insurance company to argue that you are not as injured as you say. This is not paranoia. It is how adjusters are trained to evaluate claims.

Get treatment early and consistently. The single most important thing you can do for your medical recovery and for your claim is to follow your doctors recommendations and document the treatment as you go. If your physician recommends physical therapy three times a week, do it. If they refer you to a specialist, see the specialist. If they prescribe medication, take it as prescribed. Insurance carriers comb through medical records looking for evidence that you did not do what was recommended, because that evidence supports their argument that you contributed to your own continuing pain.

Be honest and complete with your medical providers. Tell them about every symptom, even the ones that seem minor. Tell them how the injury affects your daily life, your work, your sleep, your relationships. The doctor cannot put it in the chart if you do not say it, and what is not in the chart effectively does not exist when an adjuster evaluates your claim.

Do not stop treatment because you feel a little better. Many soft tissue injuries plateau and then worsen again, especially as people return to normal activities. A premature gap in treatment makes it look like you recovered fully, even if your symptoms come roaring back two months later.

Beware of independent medical examinations. At some point, the insurance company may demand that you submit to an examination by a doctor of their choosing. This is called an IME. The doctor is not independent in any meaningful sense. They are paid by the insurance company and their reports almost universally minimize the injuries of the people they examine. We do not allow our clients to attend an IME alone or unprepared, because the consequences of a badly handled IME can be severe.

The Colorado Car Accident Claim Process Step by Step

Most people have never been through a car accident claim and do not know what to expect. The process has a rhythm, and understanding the rhythm makes it less stressful.

Phase One: Medical Treatment and Investigation

This is the foundation of the case. While you focus on getting better, your attorneys investigate the accident, gather evidence, secure the police report, identify witnesses, obtain any available video footage, and request the medical records that document your injuries. This phase is when the case is built.

Phase Two: Medical Maximum Improvement

We do not negotiate seriously with an insurance company until you have reached what doctors call maximum medical improvement, or MMI. This is the point at which further treatment is not expected to materially improve your condition. Settling before MMI almost always undervalues a claim, because there is no way to know what your future medical needs will look like.

Phase Three: Demand and Negotiation

Once MMI is reached and the medical picture is clear, we prepare a demand letter to the at-fault drivers insurance carrier. The demand summarizes the accident, the liability, the injuries, the treatment, the costs, and the value we believe the case is worth. The carrier responds with an offer, usually substantially below the demand, and a negotiation begins. Most car accident claims in Colorado settle in this phase. The negotiation can take weeks or months. Patience here is rewarded.

Phase Four: Filing Suit, If Necessary

If the insurance company will not pay fairly, we file a lawsuit. Filing a lawsuit does not mean a trial is inevitable. The vast majority of cases that are filed still settle, often on better terms than the pre-suit offers. But filing puts the case on a litigation track, which involves discovery, depositions, motions, and the possibility of trial. We walk through the full Colorado lawsuit process step by step in a separate resource.

Phase Five: Discovery and Depositions

Both sides exchange information, request documents, and take depositions of the parties and witnesses. This phase is where many cases either settle or sharpen toward trial.

Phase Six: Mediation or Trial

Most courts in Colorado require mediation before trial. A neutral mediator works with both sides to find a settlement. If mediation does not resolve the case, the case proceeds to trial in front of a judge or jury. Few cases reach this stage, but the cases that do are typically high-value cases where the carrier is gambling that a jury will return less than the demand.

Phase Seven: Collection, Lien Negotiation, and Disbursement

After settlement or verdict, the funds are collected, medical liens are negotiated, attorneys fees and case costs are paid, and the remaining settlement is disbursed to you. The lien negotiation phase is often where the largest portion of additional value can be found, because medical liens and subrogation interests are frequently negotiable for far less than their face value.

How Settlement Values Are Calculated in Colorado

There is no formula that produces an exact settlement number. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either oversimplifying or selling something. But there are clear categories of damages Colorado law recognizes, and the value of a claim is built from these categories.

Economic Damages

These are the measurable, documented financial losses. Medical bills past and future, lost wages, lost earning capacity, property damage, household services you can no longer perform, transportation costs related to medical care, and any other financial loss caused by the accident. Economic damages are the floor of a serious claim. They are calculated by adding up what has been spent and projecting what will be spent.

Non-Economic Damages

These include pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, and the impact of the injury on your relationships and daily living. Colorado caps non-economic damages in personal injury cases under CRS 13-21-102.5, with the cap adjusted periodically for inflation. The current cap is meaningful but does not preclude substantial recoveries in serious cases. Calculating non-economic damages is part art, part science, and part advocacy. Juries respond to specific, lived detail far more than they respond to generic claims of suffering.

Physical Impairment and Disfigurement

Colorado treats physical impairment as a separate category of damages, distinct from the cap on non-economic damages. Permanent scarring, loss of use of a body part, and chronic functional limitations all qualify. This category often becomes the largest single number in a serious case.

Punitive Damages

Colorado allows punitive damages in cases involving willful and wanton conduct, governed by CRS 13-21-102. Drunk drivers, drivers who flee the scene, and drivers who engage in extreme reckless behavior may face punitive damages on top of compensatory damages. Punitive damages are not common, but in the cases where they are appropriate they meaningfully increase the value of a claim.

The factors that move a case up or down within these categories are predictable. Severity of injury. Permanence of injury. Quality of medical treatment. Strength of liability. Sympathy of the plaintiff. Conduct of the defendant. Skill of the lawyer. Carrier and insurer reputation. Venue. None of these are mysterious. All of them are why the same nominal injury can produce wildly different settlement outcomes depending on who is representing the claimant.

If you are reading this and trying to estimate what your case is worth, that is the wrong question to ask alone. The right question is what your case is worth in the hands of someone who knows how to maximize it. We are happy to give you a candid assessment. Call 720-928-9178 and tell us about your accident. We will tell you what we see, what we don’t, and what we think the realistic range looks like. There is no charge for that conversation.

When a Claim Becomes a Lawsuit

Most Colorado car accident claims settle without a lawsuit being filed. Insurance carriers know that filing a lawsuit increases their costs, exposes them to discovery, and removes their ability to control the timeline. They prefer to settle. So do most claimants.

But not every claim settles cleanly. The most common reasons we file suit are these. The carrier is offering far less than the case is worth and will not move. Liability is genuinely disputed and a jury needs to decide. The damages are catastrophic and the carrier is gambling that a delay will pressure the family into accepting less. The statute of limitations is approaching and we cannot let the deadline pass while the carrier stalls.

Filing suit is not aggressive in any negative sense. It is the system working as designed. Most cases that are filed still settle, often on better terms than the pre-suit posture suggested. The act of filing changes the calculus for the carrier. It forces them to take the case seriously, to allocate reserves, and to engage with the real value of what they are dealing with.

We do not file suit unnecessarily. We do not escalate cases that should settle. But when a case calls for it, we are ready to litigate, and our clients benefit from that readiness even when the case ultimately settles.

Special Situations: DUI, Hit-and-Run, Government Vehicles, and Out-of-State Drivers

Some accidents have features that change the legal analysis. A few of the most common special situations we handle.

DUI Accidents

When a drunk driver causes your accident, the criminal case against the driver runs parallel to your civil claim. Colorado’s dram shop law under CRS 12-47-801 allows liability against bars and restaurants in narrow circumstances. The deadline for dram shop claims is shorter than the standard personal injury deadline, only one year under CRS 13-80-102. DUI cases also frequently support punitive damages. We address the legal differences between drunk and distracted driving in a related resource.

Hit-and-Run Accidents

If the driver who hit you fled the scene and cannot be identified, your own UM coverage steps in to pay your claim, treating the unknown driver as if they were uninsured. This is one of the most important reasons to carry UM coverage. We have written about specific scenarios, including the rights of victims when their parked car is hit and the driver leaves.

Accidents Involving Government Vehicles

RTD buses, city snowplows, county sheriff vehicles, ambulances, and any other governmental actor trigger the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act, CRS 24-10-101 et seq. The 182-day notice deadline is the most critical feature of these cases, and missing it is fatal to the claim. The damage caps under the Act also limit recovery against governmental defendants, although the caps have been raised in recent years.

Out-of-State Drivers

Tourists, mountain visitors, and through-traffic on I-70 produce a meaningful share of Colorado vehicle accidents. The fact that a driver is from another state does not affect your right to bring a claim in Colorado, and Colorado courts have jurisdiction over accidents that occur on Colorado roads. The practical complications are usually about service of process and locating the driver, not about the legal merits of the claim.

Rideshare and Gig Driver Accidents

Rideshare and gig driver accidents have a complicated insurance picture, with multiple policies potentially providing coverage depending on the drivers status at the time of the accident. We have addressed the specifics in our analysis of the gig economy on wheels and DoorDash or Uber Eats driver liability.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I really need a lawyer for a Colorado car accident claim?

Not always. For minor accidents with no injury and no disputed liability, you can usually handle the claim yourself. For any accident involving meaningful injury, lost work, or any dispute about fault or coverage, the data is clear that represented claimants recover more, even after attorney fees, than unrepresented claimants. The right question is not whether you can handle it alone but whether you should.

How much does a Colorado car accident lawyer cost?

We work on a contingency fee basis, which means we are paid only if we recover money for you. Our fee is a percentage of the recovery and is disclosed in writing before you sign anything. There is no charge for the initial consultation, no charge for case investigation, and no out-of-pocket cost to you for the case. If we do not win, you owe us nothing.

How long does a Colorado car accident claim take?

Most cases settle within six to eighteen months from the date of the accident, although serious injury cases often take longer because we wait for medical maximum improvement before negotiating. Cases that go into litigation typically take 18 months to three years. Cases that go to trial can take longer.

What if I was partly at fault for the accident?

Under Colorado’s modified comparative negligence rule, you can still recover damages if you are less than 50 percent at fault. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. Even where some fault is assigned to you, the case can still be valuable.

Can I still file a claim if the other driver does not have insurance?

Yes, if you carry UM coverage on your own policy. UM coverage steps in when the at-fault driver has no insurance and pays you what their insurance should have paid. If you do not have UM coverage, your options are more limited but not zero. Call us and we will tell you what is available.

What if I cannot afford medical treatment?

Many Colorado physicians accept treatment on a lien basis, meaning they treat you now and are paid from the eventual settlement. We can connect clients to providers who work this way. MedPay coverage, if you carry it, can also pay for treatment immediately regardless of fault.

What is the deadline for filing a car accident claim in Colorado?

Three years from the date of the accident under CRS 13-80-101 for most personal injury claims arising from a motor vehicle. Two years for wrongful death. 182 days notice for any claim against a governmental entity. Different deadlines apply to other situations, and waiting until the last minute is never a good idea.

What if the at-fault driver’s insurance is offering me money already?

Be careful. An early offer, particularly one that comes within days or weeks of the accident, is almost always far below what the case is worth. The carrier knows you have not yet seen the full medical picture, and they are buying a release of all your future claims for a fraction of what those claims would be worth in three months. Do not sign anything without legal advice.

Should I post about my accident on social media?

No. Anything you post about the accident, your injuries, your activities, or your recovery can be used against you. Insurance carriers actively monitor social media for evidence to undermine claims. The safest practice is to post nothing related to the accident, your injuries, or your physical activities until your case is fully resolved.

What if my injury did not show up until days after the accident?

Delayed-onset injuries are common, particularly for whiplash, soft tissue injuries, and traumatic brain injuries. The medical literature is clear that adrenaline and stress can mask injury for hours or days. As long as you seek treatment promptly once symptoms appear and document the connection to the accident, a delayed-onset injury is fully compensable.

What if I have a pre-existing condition?

Colorado follows what is called the eggshell plaintiff rule. The defendant takes the victim as they find them. If your accident worsened a pre-existing condition, the defendant is responsible for the worsening. Pre-existing conditions complicate cases but rarely defeat them, and we know how to present these claims to maximize the recovery.

Sources

• Colorado Revised Statutes 13-80-101: Three-Year Limitation for Motor Vehicle Tort Actions, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 13-21-111: Comparative Negligence, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 13-21-102.5: Limitations on Damages for Noneconomic Loss or Injury, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 13-21-102: Exemplary Damages, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 24-10-101 et seq.: Colorado Governmental Immunity Act, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 24-10-109: Notice of Claim, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 10-4-609: Uninsured Motorist Coverage, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 10-4-619: Required Coverages, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 12-47-801: Civil Liability for Service of Alcohol Beverages, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 42-7-103: Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Definitions, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Revised Statutes 42-4-1606: Accidents Involving Damage to Vehicle, leg.colorado.gov
• Colorado Department of Transportation, Crash Data and Annual Reports, codot.gov
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Safety Facts, nhtsa.gov

If you are reading this guide because you were recently in an accident, please call us. The conversation is free and there is no obligation. Most callers tell us they wish they had called sooner. We will give you a candid assessment of your situation, tell you whether you need a lawyer, explain what your case might be worth, and answer your questions in plain language. Reach Samantha Flanagan and the Flanagan Law team at 720-928-9178. We are a Colorado boutique firm. We answer our own phones. And we do not get paid unless we win your case.