Grand Junction, Colorado

Grand Junction Ski Accident Lawyers, on the Western Slope

Powderhorn is on the Grand Mesa, about 40 miles east of here up CO-65, and it is in Mesa County. So is Grand Junction. That means the resort, the hospital, and the courthouse can all fall inside the 21st Judicial District, which is unusual in this state. Grand Junction also carries designated trauma care that the rest of western Colorado relies on. We handle Colorado Ski Safety Act claims from our Denver office at 2701 Lawrence St., and we charge no fee unless we win.

No fee unless we win

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It's More Than Money.

Our Denver Office CGH Injury Lawyers 2701 Lawrence St., Suite 201 Denver, CO 80205 (303) 209-9395 Se habla espanol

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Colorado runs ski injuries through a dedicated statute before ordinary negligence is reached.
Lift injuries and snow injuries fall under different provisions, damages included.
A signed release is a contract, and it cannot cover reckless or grossly negligent conduct.
Each deadline is 2 years, supplied by a different statute depending on the defendant.
The consultation is free, and our fee comes only from a recovery.

The law on the mountain

What the Colorado Ski Safety Act does to a ski injury claim

Most injury claims open by asking whether somebody failed to be careful. A ski claim has a question ahead of that one, because the General Assembly legislated on this subject and courts apply that legislation first. The Ski Safety Act of 1979, C.R.S. 33-44-101 and following, sets out the duties a resort carries, the duties a skier carries, and a defined body of hazards that produces no claim against anyone.

That body of hazards is defined at C.R.S. 33-44-103, and the definition is wide. It covers changing weather. It covers snow conditions in every form, ice, hard pack, powder, crust, slush, cut-up snow, and machine-made snow. It covers surface and subsurface conditions, meaning bare spots, forest growth, rocks, stumps, streambeds, cliffs, extreme terrain, and trees. It covers variation in steepness, whether the mountain produced it or slope design, snowmaking, and grooming did. It covers impact with lift towers, signs, posts, fences, hydrants, water pipes, and other structures somebody built. An injury inside that definition belongs to the skier.

The same definition then limits itself twice, and the limits are where claims are found. Inherent dangers and risks of skiing do not include the negligence of a ski area operator as described at C.R.S. 33-44-104(2). And nothing in the section limits an operator's liability for injury caused by the use or operation of ski lifts.

A correction worth making before anything else, since unreliable versions of this Act are easy to find. The statute is built on the term "ski area" and on sliding downhill or jumping on snow or ice. It does not classify resorts by type of skiing, and it sets no helmet requirement for any skier at any age.

Inherent dangers (no recovery)

Every state snow takes, and the exposed ground where the cover thins out
Conditions overhead, and how far a skier can actually see through them
Whatever the mountain grew or eroded into place: trees, forest growth, rocks, stumps, cliffs, and streambeds
Gradient that shifts underfoot, from nature or from design, snowmaking, and grooming work
Running into a tower, sign, post, fence, hydrant, or pipe that has always occupied that spot

Operator negligence (recovery possible)

A lift that fails, loads badly, halts hard, drops a rider, or injures someone at the unload
Warning signs the Act calls for that were never posted, posted wrong, or impossible to make out
Snowcats or snowmaking rigs working a trail left open, without the warning the Act demands
Structures placed by the resort and then left bare of padding or markings inside a skiing area
Employees, instructors, or patrollers who did their job carelessly

Nothing in that first column is final. Hit a tower and the file opens in the inherent category; discover the tower should have been padded and it does not stay there. That is a question to raise, and not one to leave to whoever classified it first.

Speed, course, and lookout

Each skier has a duty to keep control of speed and course at all times and to maintain a proper lookout for others. The statute then puts the primary duty on the person skiing downhill, the skier coming from above, who must avoid colliding with any person or object below them. Reconstructing who held which position is normally the center of the dispute.
Signs and closed trails

Posted information and warnings have to be heeded, and a trail posted as closed cannot be skied. A skier is presumed to have seen and understood what was posted near base area lifts, on the tramways, and on the trails being skied.
Starting and joining

Beginning to ski from a stationary position, or entering a trail from the side, brings a duty to avoid the skiers already coming down.
Devices for loose equipment

Each ski or board must have a strap or other device capable of stopping it if it detaches. Cross country skis are excluded from that requirement.
Impairment, and leaving a collision

Moving uphill on a lift or using a trail while impaired by alcohol or a controlled substance is prohibited, as is leaving the vicinity of an injury collision without giving your name and current address to a resort employee or patroller. The statute allows a departure to secure aid, provided the information follows.
What the current penalties actually say

This subsection was rewritten and older reproductions still print the previous wording, so the detail deserves care. C.R.S. 33-44-109(12)(a) makes it a civil infraction, punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000, to violate the closed-trail provision, the impairment provision, or the provision on knowingly entering closed adjoining lands. C.R.S. 33-44-109(12)(b) makes leaving the scene of an injury collision a petty offense, a separate classification that sits outside that $1,000 group.
Comparative fault

Colorado then divides responsibility. C.R.S. 13-21-111 allows a claimant to recover only where their negligence was not as great as the negligence of the party sued, and reduces the award by the claimant's share. Once that share reaches half, the claim is finished. That is the arithmetic behind an insurer's interest in settling the story early.

The governing idea is that a release is a contract. Colorado applies contract principles to it, which means the language is held to a standard of clarity and is confined to the subject it actually addresses. Draft against ordinary negligence and you have addressed ordinary negligence, and nothing else has been signed away.

Everything of consequence lives past that boundary. Conduct that is willful and wanton, conduct that is reckless, and conduct that is grossly negligent cannot be released at all. A resort that identified a hazard and left it standing, that failed to carry out an inspection it was required to carry out, or that went on operating equipment it understood to be faulty is outside the protection it thinks the paperwork provides.

A different provision governs minors. Under C.R.S. 13-22-107(3) a parent is permitted to release or waive a child's prospective negligence claim for the child. Subsection (4) then withholds that power for a willful and wanton act or omission, a reckless act or omission, or a grossly negligent act or omission.

The error people make is treating the document as the answer. It is one input, and it gets weighed against the conduct that caused the injury.

Courthouse

The 21st Judicial District is Mesa County

Grand Junction is the seat of Mesa County, and Mesa County forms the 21st Judicial District on its own. District matters are handled at the Mesa County Justice Center, 125 N. Spruce St., Grand Junction, CO 81501. Powderhorn Mountain Resort sits on the Grand Mesa, roughly 40 miles east of the city, reached from I-70 at Exit 49 and then south on CO-65 through the town of Mesa. It is in Mesa County. Venue in these cases generally follows the resort and the place the injury happened, so a Grand Junction skier hurt at Powderhorn has an accident and a courthouse inside the same judicial district. That alignment is not the usual pattern in Colorado, where most skiers are injured well outside the district they live in. It stops applying the moment the trip goes further. Aspen, Snowmass, Telluride, Steamboat, and the resorts along I-70 east of here all sit in other counties and other districts, and a claim from any of them is normally litigated where the crash happened. Mesa County is geographically large, so a local skier can spend a long time inside it and still end up at a resort outside it.

Trauma Care

Designated care in town, at 2 levels

Intermountain Health St. Mary's Regional Hospital, 2635 N. 7th St., is a designated Level II trauma center. Community Hospital, 2351 G Road, is designated Level III. Both are in Grand Junction. That matters more here than the equivalent fact would on the Front Range. St. Mary's is the higher-level designation nearest to a wide stretch of western and southwestern Colorado, and patients are transferred to it from smaller facilities across the region. A Grand Junction resident may therefore be treated at home for an injury that happened hours away, and a skier hurt anywhere on this side of the mountains may generate the most important part of their medical record inside this city. For a case that produces a record spread across institutions: patrol documentation at the resort, a first hospital nearer the mountain, the transport, then the receiving hospital here, then follow-up care. Each keeps its own file and releases it separately. Assembling the sequence is ordinary work, and it is how the extent of an injury gets demonstrated instead of asserted. The same point applies in reverse to venue. Being treated at St. Mary's does not put a claim in Mesa County. The location of the injury does most of the work in answering that question, and a transfer into Grand Junction from another county does not move the case here.

The Corridor

Distance is the practical fact of a Western Slope claim

Grand Junction is a long way from Denver, and from the courts and experts that cluster there. That shapes how these cases run more than it changes what the law is. Depositions, medical examinations, and expert work get scheduled around travel, and a good deal of it happens by video. Records come from institutions that are not on the Front Range and do not always use the same systems. None of that is a barrier, and it is worth saying plainly because distance is the reason people here sometimes assume a claim is not worth pursuing. The Ski Safety Act applies identically at Powderhorn and at Vail. The deadlines are the same. The work simply has to be organized around the geography.

Economic damages

The cost of getting you off the hill, a helicopter included when one was called
Everything from the emergency department through surgery and specialist care to discharge
Pay you did not receive while recovering, and the earning power you did not get back
Rehabilitation work, both physical and occupational
Treatment still ahead of you, costed through a life care plan in a serious injury
Money you spent yourself because of the injury

Non-economic damages

What an orthopedic, spinal, or head injury costs in pain and suffering
Function you no longer have, and impairment that is not going to resolve
The enjoyment taken out of daily life, skiing among it
Where someone died, the funeral and the companionship lost with them

The operator cap, and the lift exception inside it

What a ski area operator can be made to pay is limited by statute. C.R.S. 33-44-113 sets a total ceiling of $1,000,000 present value, caps any derivative claim by another claimant at $250,000, and caps non-economic loss at $250,000. Four features of the section change how it lands.

Injuries occurring to a passenger while riding on a passenger tramway are excluded from the cap by the statute's own terms, which is why a chairlift case is analyzed separately from a case on the snow.
The cap governs claims against an operator only. A claim against the skier who caused the collision is not subject to it.
A court may award above the ceiling on good cause shown, confined to excess future lost earnings or excess future medical and other health-care costs, and only where applying the limit would be unfair.
The limits and the exceptions to them are not disclosed to the jury.

Against a ski area operator or its employees, where the damages were caused by the maintenance, supervision, or operation of a passenger tramway or a ski area, C.R.S. 33-44-111 governs and requires the action to be brought within 2 years after the claim for relief arises. Against another skier that section does not apply, because its text is addressed to operators. The limitation there comes from C.R.S. 13-80-102(1)(a), the general 2-year period for tort actions.

When the period opens is its own question. C.R.S. 13-80-108(1) provides that a cause of action accrues on the date both the injury and its cause are known or should have been known through reasonable diligence. In most ski cases that is the day of the crash. Injuries that develop quietly, which describes much head and spine trauma from a fall, are the reason the rule is drafted that way. Waiting to see how far the damage goes does not add time.

Fault runs on a separate track. C.R.S. 13-21-111 permits recovery while the claimant's negligence stays below that of the party sued, reducing the award in proportion to the claimant's share, and ends recovery at an even split. Insurers are well acquainted with that threshold, and the account of a collision that keeps a claimant clear of it is built from witnesses and records in the first weeks.

Trial-Ready

Built for trial.

A file that is plainly ready for a courtroom is valued differently from one that is not.

The Statute

Ski claims run on their own rules.

Inherent risk, statutory duties, the operator cap, and release language do not behave like ordinary negligence.

Fast Evidence Action

Proof expires.

Lift maintenance logs, grooming records, incident reports, patrol notes, and the state of signage all change or disappear. Preservation demands need to go out early.

No Win, No Fee

No fee unless we win.

Nothing is owed for the consultation, and our fee comes from a recovery. The fee agreement sets out how case costs are handled before you sign.

Local Reach

Distance is not an obstacle.

Grand Junction is a long way from Denver, and this work is done by phone, video, and travel when travel is what a case needs.

Free consultation

Tell us what happened and get a straight answer on whether there is a claim, including when the answer is that there is not.
Preservation

Written demands go to the resort for lift logs, grooming records, incident reports, and video before retention periods run.
Investigation

Witnesses are located, patrol and clinic records obtained, and where the mechanism of injury is contested, an accident reconstruction expert is brought in.
Medical picture

Records are collected from every facility in the chain, including transfers into Grand Junction from elsewhere, and in serious cases treating physicians and life care planners establish what recovery requires.
Demand and negotiation

The claim goes out backed by evidence.
Litigation where needed

Where the offer does not match the harm, suit is filed in the correct venue and the case is worked up for trial.

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Which judicial district is Grand Junction in?

The 21st, which is Mesa County. District matters are handled at the Mesa County Justice Center, 125 N. Spruce St., in Grand Junction.

I was hurt at Powderhorn. Where would the case be filed?

Powderhorn is on the Grand Mesa in Mesa County, and venue generally follows the resort and the site of the injury, so a claim from there commonly stays in this district. A crash at a resort in another county is usually litigated in that county.

What if I was hurt at Aspen, Telluride, or a resort on I-70?

Then the claim normally belongs in the county containing that resort. Where you live does not move venue, and Mesa County is large enough that a local skier can drive a long way and still end up outside it.

I was transferred to St. Mary's from another hospital. Does my case belong in Mesa County?

Not for that reason. St. Mary's Regional Hospital on North 7th Street is a designated Level II trauma center that receives transfers from across the region, and being treated here does not move a claim here. The location of the injury does most of the work in deciding venue.

What trauma care is available in Grand Junction?

Intermountain Health St. Mary's Regional Hospital, 2635 N. 7th St., is designated Level II, and Community Hospital, 2351 G Road, is designated Level III. A transfer between facilities is common in serious cases and simply means records exist in more than one place.

Is it harder to bring a claim from the Western Slope?

No. The Ski Safety Act applies the same way at every ski area in the state, and the deadlines are identical. Distance affects scheduling and how much work happens by video, and it does not change the law or the value of a claim.

Does the release on my pass end my claim?

Not on its own. Colorado reads a release as a contract, so it reaches only the conduct it clearly describes. It cannot cover willful and wanton conduct, recklessness, or gross negligence, and under C.R.S. 13-22-107(4) a parent cannot waive a child's claim for conduct in those categories.

Another skier hit me. Is that just part of the sport?

Not in a claim between skiers. C.R.S. 33-44-109(1) provides that a skier-skier collision is neither an inherent risk nor a risk assumed in an action by one skier against another, and the statute places the primary duty to avoid the collision on the person skiing downhill, the skier who is above.

I was hurt on a chairlift. Is that treated differently?

It can be. C.R.S. 33-44-103 states that nothing in the inherent-risk definition limits an operator's liability for injury caused by the use or operation of ski lifts, and C.R.S. 33-44-113 excludes injuries occurring to a passenger while riding on a passenger tramway from the damages cap.

How long do I have?

2 years. Against a ski area operator or its employees the deadline comes from C.R.S. 33-44-111, and against another skier from C.R.S. 13-80-102(1)(a). The period generally starts when both the injury and its cause were known or reasonably should have been known.

Is there a cap on what I can recover?

Against a ski area operator, yes. C.R.S. 33-44-113 sets $1,000,000 present value overall, with $250,000 on derivative claims and on non-economic loss. Passenger tramway injuries are excluded, the cap does not apply to a claim against another skier, and a court may exceed it on good cause shown for excess future earnings or future medical costs.

Do I have to wear a helmet in Colorado?

The Ski Safety Act imposes no helmet requirement at any age. Wearing one is sensible, and it is not what decides whether a claim exists.

What if I was partly at fault?

Recovery is still available while your negligence stays below the other party's, with the award reduced by your share. At half or more, C.R.S. 13-21-111 ends recovery, which is why the early account of fault is worth challenging.

What will this cost me?

Nothing to start. The consultation is free, and the fee is taken only from a recovery. How case costs are handled is set out in the fee agreement before you sign.

Grand Junction

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It's More Than Money.

You were hurt on the mountain. We handle everything else.

Call (303) 209-9395 or request a free case review. No fee unless we win.

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Grand Junction Ski Accident Lawyers, on the Western Slope

What the Colorado Ski Safety Act does to a ski injury claim

The one question that decides most of the case

Inherent dangers (no recovery)

Operator negligence (recovery possible)

Claims against another skier under C.R.S. 33-44-109

Speed, course, and lookout

Signs and closed trails

Starting and joining

Devices for loose equipment

Impairment, and leaving a collision

What the current penalties actually say

Comparative fault

How much of a claim the release actually takes

A resort in the county, and a hospital the rest of the region depends on

The 21st Judicial District is Mesa County

Designated care in town, at 2 levels

Distance is the practical fact of a Western Slope claim

What an injured Grand Junction skier may be able to recover

Economic damages

Non-economic damages

The operator cap, and the lift exception inside it

Two years, from whichever statute fits the defendant

Why injured Grand Junction skiers choose CGH Injury Lawyers

Built for trial.

Ski claims run on their own rules.

Proof expires.

No fee unless we win.

Distance is not an obstacle.

How we handle a Grand Junction ski accident case

Free consultation

Preservation

Investigation

Medical picture

Demand and negotiation

Litigation where needed

Grand Junction ski accident, frequently asked questions

Related pages

You were hurt on the mountain. We handle everything else.