IT'S MORE THAN MONEY.
I-25 threads a narrow downtown corridor, Powers Boulevard runs freeway-speed traffic into signalised intersections, and Academy Boulevard carries the heaviest commercial frontage in the city. CGH Injury Lawyers serves Colorado Springs from our Denver office and files at the El Paso County District Court on South Tejon Street. No fee unless we win.
No fee unless we winColorado Springs is the largest city this firm serves outside Denver, and it is one of very few Colorado cities where both the district court and a Level I trauma center sit inside the city limits.
That combination matters on a rear-end file. The treating records and the courthouse are in the same place, which shortens the distance between the injury and the evidence. Our Colorado injury attorneys work that file from Denver.
Who is at fault
Colorado asks drivers to keep a distance suited to the speed of the vehicles, the traffic and the condition of the highway (C.R.S. 42-4-1008). Striking the vehicle ahead is, in most cases, evidence the distance was not enough.
The scale of the city puts particular pressure on that duty, because a single trip can move between interstate, expressway and dense commercial arterial within a few miles.
Clear liability rarely ends the dispute. Once fault is hard to contest, insurers reach for three familiar arguments:
We develop fault and injury together rather than resolving one and hoping the other follows. That means securing the Colorado Springs Police Department, El Paso County Sheriff or Colorado State Patrol report early, and moving for driver logs and onboard data where a commercial vehicle was involved.
The wider collision practice for the city sits on our Colorado Springs car accident lawyer page.
Where Colorado Springs rear-end crashes cluster
A rear-end crash needs one condition: a vehicle decelerating faster than the driver behind expected. A city this size produces that in six recognisable ways.
I-25 carries regional through traffic and local commuting on the same lanes as it passes the city center, with closely spaced ramps and short weaving sections. Merging traffic forces repeated braking in the through lanes.
The Cimarron interchange at US 24 concentrates that conflict further, because interstate and highway movements exchange in a compressed space.
Powers Boulevard carries State Highway 21 along the eastern side of the city, alternating grade-separated segments with signalised at-grade intersections. A driver who has been travelling at expressway speed meets a red light with very little transition.
That alternation between open running and abrupt stopping is the single most productive rear-end pattern on the corridor, and the closing speeds are high enough to make the injuries serious.
Academy Boulevard runs a long commercial spine through the city, with driveway entrances, bus stops and turning movements spaced closely along it. Vehicles decelerate out of a through lane constantly.
These impacts occur at lower speeds than the highway crashes, and insurers press that point hard. Low speed does not mean low injury, and the medical record has to establish the difference.
Woodmen Road carries heavy east-west commuting across the northern part of the city and meets both I-25 and Powers Boulevard. Peak-period queuing extends well back from each junction.
Drivers who use the route daily tend to follow closely because they know the sequence of signals, which is exactly the habit that fails when the sequence changes.
Several large military installations sit around the city, and their access roads generate concentrated arrival and departure surges rather than an even flow. Gate queues can extend onto public roads with little warning.
A queue that forms on a road built for free-flowing traffic is a rear-end mechanism, because the stopped vehicles are where drivers do not expect them.
The corridor north of the city climbs toward the highest point between here and Denver, and the exposed segments collect ice and blowing snow ahead of the sheltered streets. Summer hail can drop visibility and traction within a minute.
Where a road authority is implicated in a surface condition, the 182-day notice requirement under C.R.S. 24-10-109(1) can come into play, running from discovery of the injury.
Local knowledge
A Colorado Springs rear-end case is anchored in three places: the corridor it happened on, the hospital that received it, and the courthouse where it may be filed.
Courthouse
The listed line is (719) 452-5490.
El Paso County is the venue for crashes inside the city and across the surrounding unincorporated areas. Venue usually follows the county where the crash happened, though Colorado rules can also allow filing where a defendant resides or may be found.
Trauma care
Penrose Hospital also provides trauma care in the city.
A Level I designation means the most severe injuries can be treated in the city rather than transferred north. That shortens the treatment record and removes the transfer gap that complicates files in smaller Colorado communities.
High-crash corridors
The interchanges where the expressways meet the arterials are where the queues form.
CGH Injury Lawyers takes rear-end cases from all of those corridors, including the interstate segments where the Colorado State Patrol takes the report.
What to do after
Neck and disc injuries commonly feel manageable at the roadside and considerably worse two or three days later. What happens early shapes both the recovery and the claim.
Colorado requires the driver of a vehicle involved in a crash resulting in injury, serious bodily injury, death, or any property damage to give immediate notice to the nearest police authority (C.R.S. 42-4-1606). The Colorado Springs Police Department responds on city streets, the El Paso County Sheriff covers unincorporated areas, and the Colorado State Patrol handles I-25.
A separate provision of that section lets an officer skip a written report on a minor property-damage-only crash. That limits the officer duty and does not remove the driver duty to give notice.
UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central handles the most serious presentations, and urgent care or a primary physician covers everything below that threshold. A gap between the crash and the first medical visit is the first thing an adjuster will raise.
Photograph the front of the other vehicle and the rear of yours, the resting position of both, the signal phase if visible, and the road surface. Where a commercial vehicle was involved, capture the door markings, the trailer number and the US DOT number.
Those identifiers are what let an attorney reach the carrier, the insurer and the driver logs while the records still exist.
The other driver insurer is not neutral, and a commercial carrier insurer moves faster than most. Do not give a recorded statement and do not sign a release before an attorney has read it.
In rear-end files the recorded statement is where an adjuster works toward two admissions: that the injury was mild, and that the stop was sudden.
Colorado generally allows three years from the crash for motor vehicle injury claims (C.R.S. 13-80-101(1)(n)). Where a public entity is involved, the 182-day written notice under C.R.S. 24-10-109(1) is a jurisdictional prerequisite and missing it can bar that part of the claim outright.
What an adjuster is doing on that first call is set out in the insurance adjuster trap.
Compensation
Colorado divides recoverable losses into two groups, and the caps treat them very differently.
Colorado caps non-economic damages under C.R.S. 13-21-102.5, amended by House Bill 24-1472 with effect from 1 January 2025 to set the figure at $1.5 million. The statute begins adjusting that figure for inflation on 1 January 2028 and every two years after.
Two separate routes reach the raised cap. A civil action filed during calendar 2025 qualified regardless of when the crash happened, and independently any claim accruing on or after 1 January 2025 qualifies, which is the route covering a crash today.
Physical impairment and disfigurement sit outside that cap, economic damages are not limited by it either, and wrongful death claims fall under a separate section. Exemplary damages may be available under C.R.S. 13-21-102 where the conduct involved fraud, malice, or willful and wanton disregard.
A claim against a public entity works differently. The Governmental Immunity Act caps the total recoverable amount, economic and non-economic together. For claims accruing on or after 1 January 2026 the Secretary of State certified $505,000 for one person and $1,421,000 for two or more in a single occurrence, with no individual exceeding $505,000.
Which figure governs a particular crash turns on the accrual date, the parties and the theory pleaded, so it is worth confirming rather than assuming. How car accident settlements are calculated in Colorado walks through how the categories add up.
Defences insurers use
Once fault is conceded the fight moves elsewhere. These are the arguments and what answers each.
Vehicle damage and occupant injury do not correlate reliably, because bumper systems are engineered to absorb and rebound from low-speed impacts rather than to record them.
Same-day documentation, imaging and a treating physician opinion answer that directly. It surfaces most often in the Academy Boulevard and Nevada Avenue crashes.
Under C.R.S. 13-21-111 an insurer needs to move only 50 percent of the fault to defeat the claim completely, which is why the argument is pressed so hard.
The police report, witness accounts, signal timing and commercial vehicle data are what answer it.
Prior medical records are requested precisely to locate a pre-existing condition to attribute the pain to.
A clear treatment timeline and a physician explanation of what changed after the crash are the response.
Colorado is a fault-based state, so the claim runs against the at-fault driver liability insurer, and where that driver carries minimum limits or nothing, uninsured and underinsured coverage on your own policy or an employer policy may apply.
Those questions are worked through in is Colorado a no-fault state and in hit by an uninsured driver in Colorado.
The law behind your claim
A rear-end claim is a negligence claim. The following driver begins in a difficult position, and the elements still have to be proved:
Comparative fault runs across all four. Under C.R.S. 13-21-111 a plaintiff below 50 percent recovers a reduced award, and at 50 percent or above recovers nothing.
These elements govern every collision claim in the state. Our statewide Colorado car accident page sets them out in more depth.
How the claim works
A Colorado Springs rear-end claim moves through six stages. Most resolve before a courtroom, and each is prepared as though it will not.
We go through what happened, explain how Colorado law applies, and answer questions at no cost and with no obligation.
We collect the Colorado Springs Police Department, El Paso County Sheriff or Colorado State Patrol report, witness accounts, treatment records, and any carrier records.
A claim cannot be valued until the medical picture is stable. Rushing this stage is the most common way a rear-end injury gets undervalued.
If the offer stays unreasonable we file at 270 South Tejon Street in the Fourth Judicial District. Managing Partner Kevin Cheney is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates and has tried more than 25 cases to verdict.
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Your team
CGH Injury Lawyers is the trade name of Cheney Galluzzi & Howard, LLC, an eight-attorney Colorado firm founded in 2016. The firm works in English and Spanish.
Managing Partner Kevin Cheney is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates and Treasurer of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association. Timothy G. Tarr has been recognised by Best Lawyers each year from 2023 through 2026, and Nicole Greene was named a Super Lawyers Rising Star in 2025.
Every Colorado Springs rear-end case is handled by a licensed Colorado attorney. The fee is contingent, so nothing is owed unless the case is won.
More on Kevin Cheney background and the firm Colorado case results.
Serving Colorado Springs from Denver
Our office is at 2701 Lawrence St., Suite 201, Denver, CO 80205. There is no Colorado Springs location, no satellite address and no local storefront.
The courthouse is in Colorado Springs and the firm is not. We serve the city and El Paso County from Denver, file at 270 South Tejon Street, and travel to clients for meetings, medical appointments and site visits. Call (303) 747-4817 or use our contact page.
Frequently asked questions
Usually responsible, but not automatically. Colorado requires a following distance that is reasonable and prudent for the speed and conditions (C.R.S. 42-4-1008), which puts the following driver in a difficult starting position.
Insurers still work to move a share of blame by arguing the lead driver stopped short, merged late or had a brake light out. Under C.R.S. 13-21-111 a share below 50 percent reduces recovery rather than ending it.
Yes. Colorado attorneys are licensed statewide, so a Denver firm can appear in the Fourth Judicial District the same as any other.
What matters more is whether the firm knows the corridors, the responding agencies and the treating hospitals well enough to build the file quickly, and whether it will travel to the client rather than the other way around.
Powers alternates grade-separated expressway segments with at-grade signalised intersections, so drivers arrive at a stopped queue carrying expressway speed. The closing speed is what drives injury severity.
That pattern also produces multi-vehicle chain reactions, where establishing the sequence of impacts becomes central to the claim and is far easier from the scene investigation than from later recollection.
Possibly. Vehicle damage is a poor proxy for occupant injury, because modern bumper systems are designed to absorb energy rather than display it.
Neck, disc and concussion injuries all occur in impacts leaving very little visible damage. Prompt medical documentation is what answers the argument.
The duty is identical, but the case is not. A carrier brings its own insurer, its own investigators, and records including driver logs and onboard data that can be overwritten on a retention schedule.
Early preservation therefore matters far more than in a two-car file. It also often means higher available policy limits, which is significant when the injury is serious.
Colorado generally allows three years from the date of the crash for tort actions arising out of the use or operation of a motor vehicle (C.R.S. 13-80-101(1)(n)). A claim involving a public entity generally requires written notice within 182 days of discovering the injury (C.R.S. 24-10-109(1)).
Deadlines can run differently depending on the facts and the parties, so the applicable one is worth confirming early.
No. There is one office, at 2701 Lawrence St., Suite 201, Denver, CO 80205.
Colorado Springs and El Paso County clients are served from that office, cases are filed at the El Paso County District Court, and meetings happen wherever is convenient. Call (303) 747-4817 for a free, confidential consultation.
Colorado Springs
Practice areas
IT'S MORE THAN MONEY.
Rear-end injuries get harder to prove the longer a file sits, and commercial vehicle records age out faster still. Call CGH Injury Lawyers at (303) 747-4817 or request a free consultation.
CGH Injury Lawyers · 2701 Lawrence St., Suite 201, Denver, CO 80205
