CGH Injury Lawyers is part of a full suite of Denver personal injury representation, and this page focuses specifically on what makes bus accident claims in Denver legally distinct from every other case we handle. Whether you were riding the 16th Street Free MallRide, commuting through Five Points, or caught in a multi-vehicle crash near the I-25 and Broadway interchange, we investigate independently, fight the insurance company’s playbook head-on, and work on contingency — meaning you pay nothing unless we win.

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Last Updated: March 28, 2026

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The Colorado Governmental Immunity Act — What It Actually Means for Your RTD Claim

The CGIA is the single most important law governing Denver bus accident claims against RTD, and most injured commuters don’t know it exists until it’s too late.

The Colorado Governmental Immunity Act, codified at C.R.S. § 24-10-101 et seq., governs all claims against public entities in Colorado — including the Regional Transportation District. Under the CGIA, any person injured by a public entity’s negligence must file a written Notice of Claim within 182 days of the date of the injury. This notice must identify the claimant, describe the circumstances of the injury, and be filed with the correct governmental entity. For RTD claims, that means RTD’s legal department specifically — not Denver city government, not the Colorado Department of Transportation.

The CGIA also imposes statutory caps on damages recoverable from public entities. These caps are distinct from Colorado’s general non-economic damages cap (raised to $1.5 million in 2025 for private defendants) and apply specifically to RTD and other government defendants. For claims accruing on or after January 1, 2026, the CGIA caps recovery against a public entity at $505,000 per person — significantly lower than the general tort cap. In plain terms: the maximum amount you can recover from RTD is lower than what you could recover from a private bus company for the same injury.

Understanding which cap applies, how to structure your claim to work within those limits, and how to pursue any third-party defendants who may not be subject to CGIA protections — that’s where the legal strategy becomes critical. This is general information, not legal advice. Every case is different.

How CGH Injury Lawyers Handles a Denver Bus Accident Case

Step 1: Emergency Evidence Preservation Before RTD Overwrites the Record

Within the first 24 to 48 hours of being retained, we issue formal litigation hold demands to RTD’s legal department for dashcam footage, internal transit surveillance from Union Station and along the relevant Colfax or MallRide corridor, driver logs, pre-trip inspection records, and dispatch communications. RTD’s internal footage overwrite cycles mean this step cannot wait. We also contact the Denver Police Department for any incident reports and begin identifying independent witnesses before memories fade.

Step 2: CGIA-Compliant Notice of Claim Filed With RTD’s Legal Department

We prepare and file the Notice of Claim with RTD’s legal department — the specific governmental entity required under the CGIA — and document every element required by C.R.S. § 24-10-109. This includes the claimant’s identity, the circumstances of the injury, the nature of the claim, and the damages sought. We calendar the 182-day deadline from the date of injury and work backward from that date to ensure the notice is filed with time to spare. A procedurally defective notice is treated the same as no notice at all under Colorado law.

Step 3: Independent Liability Investigation and Insurance Fight

We don’t take RTD’s account of the crash or the insurance company’s valuation of your injuries at face value. We conduct our own independent investigation — accident reconstruction when warranted, medical expert consultation to document the full scope of your injuries including delayed-onset TBI and spinal trauma, and a systematic challenge to any attempt by RTD or a third-party insurer to shift fault onto you under Colorado’s modified comparative negligence rules. If the insurer’s Colossus-generated offer doesn’t reflect the real cost of your injuries, we build the record to override it — and we prepare every case as if it’s going to trial, because that preparation is what creates genuine settlement leverage.

How Insurance Companies Value Your Denver Bus Injury — And Why the Number Is Wrong

Insurance adjusters don’t evaluate your injuries individually — they run them through software, and the output is designed to minimize what you’re paid.

A program called Colossus, used widely by major carriers, applies predetermined algorithms to soft tissue injuries like whiplash and spinal trauma. The output is a number. That number is not based on your specific medical history, your actual pain, or what your life looked like before the crash. It’s based on how your billing codes map to a database of prior low settlements.

For Denver bus accident victims — who are unrestrained passengers by definition, since RTD buses have no seatbelts — this algorithmic approach is especially damaging. The physics of a bus collision are fundamentally different from a car crash. When a 40,000-pound transit bus brakes hard or is struck by another vehicle, unrestrained passengers absorb that force through uncontrolled body movement. The result is often traumatic brain injuries with delayed symptom onset, cervical spine damage that doesn’t appear on initial imaging, and soft tissue injuries that worsen over weeks.

Colossus doesn’t account for any of that. It accounts for billing codes.

Overriding an algorithmic valuation requires building a specific medical record — the right diagnostic imaging, the right specialist documentation, and expert testimony that ties your injury to its long-term economic impact. We know exactly what that record needs to look like, and we build it before the insurance company has a chance to shape the narrative.

Here’s the math worth knowing: initial settlement offers in personal injury cases average just 10 to 20 percent of actual case value. If the insurance company has offered you something that feels low, you’re right to question it. A free consultation costs you nothing. Signing a release before you understand what your case is actually worth could cost you everything.

Understanding the full legal landscape of personal injury claims in Colorado — including how bus accident claims interact with negligence standards — is covered in depth in our guide to Colorado personal injury practice areas.

Comparative Fault in Denver Bus Crashes: The Insurance Company’s Favorite Weapon

Colorado’s modified comparative negligence law allows insurance companies to reduce — or eliminate — your recovery by assigning you a share of the fault. In multi-vehicle bus crashes, they use this aggressively.

Under Colorado law, your compensation is reduced proportionally by your percentage of fault. If you’re found 50% or more at fault, you recover nothing. In crashes near Denver’s I-25 and Broadway interchange, along congested Colfax Avenue, or in the pedestrian-heavy corridors around Union Station, fault is rarely clean. A bus driver’s negligence, a third-party motorist’s lane change, and a pedestrian’s position can all become variables in a liability dispute — and insurance adjusters are trained to find ways to assign as much of that fault to the victim as possible.

We don’t accept that framing. Our independent investigation documents the scene, secures witness statements, subpoenas RTD’s driver logs and training records, and — when a private carrier is involved — pulls FMCSA compliance data. We build the liability picture before the insurance company builds theirs. The distinction between ordinary negligence and gross negligence also matters significantly in multi-vehicle bus crashes — it affects both the legal theory of liability and the damages available. Our analysis of ordinary vs. gross negligence under Colorado law explains how that distinction applies to commercial vehicle collisions and why it shapes our investigation strategy from the first day of a case.

Related Services

If you were a pedestrian struck by an RTD bus rather than a passenger aboard one, the liability framework shifts in important ways — see our Denver pedestrian accident lawyer page for how those claims are built.

Bus crashes that result in traumatic brain injury involve a separate layer of medical documentation and long-term damages calculation — our Denver brain injury lawyers work alongside our bus accident team when TBI is part of the claim.

Meet Kevin Cheney, CGH Injury Lawyers’ Managing Partner

Written by Kevin Cheney, Managing Partner at CGH Injury Lawyers | View attorney profile

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