How damages are limited, and what isn’t: C.R.S. 13-21-102.5
Noneconomic losses are the harms you can’t total on a receipt, including pain and suffering, emotional stress, and damage to your quality of life. Colorado sets a $1.5 million cap on those losses for claims arising on or after January 1, 2025. Different rules govern medical malpractice and wrongful death, and the cap is adjusted for inflation starting January 1, 2028.
Economic losses are not included in that cap. A week in intensive care, a series of grafts, and the income you lose during months of recovery: none of those are non-economic damages (C.R.S. 13-21-102.5(3)).
C.R.S. 13-21-102.5(5) states that the statute doesn’t limit compensatory damages for physical impairment or disfigurement. Scarring may be compensated as disfigurement, and reduced movement may count as physical impairment.
Injuries on someone else’s property: C.R.S. 13-21-115
This law determines what an owner, a person in possession, or anyone else legally responsible for a property owes you. The key is your status.
Colorado recognizes three statuses: trespasser, licensee, and invitee. A judge assigns one based on the facts.
Invitees are owed the highest duty. The statute describes them as people on the land to do business in which both they and the owner are interested, or people who came in because the owner represented that the public was expected. An invitee can recover when the owner unreasonably failed to exercise reasonable care to guard against dangers the owner actually knew or should have known about.
The Act handles social guests differently, treating them as licensees. A licensee’s recovery is generally limited to dangers the owner actually knew about, a harder standard to meet (C.R.S. 13-21-115(4)(b)). Actual knowledge is also required for invitees on land classified for property tax purposes as agricultural or vacant.
When fault is divided: C.R.S. 13-21-111
Colorado’s comparative negligence statute (C.R.S. 13-21-111) reduces your damages by your percentage of fault in a negligence claim. If your percentage equals or exceeds the fault of the party you’re pursuing, judgment is entered for the defendant.
Imagine a driver whose car caught fire after being rear-ended at a light, and an insurer that argues the driver was slow to get out. If a jury set the driver’s share at 10 percent, the award would drop by that amount.
Filing periods
Colorado tort claims generally have two years from accrual to be filed (C.R.S. 13-80-102(1)(a)), a period strict liability claims over defective products also follow (C.R.S. 13-80-102(1)(b)). Tort claims arising out of the use or operation of a motor vehicle generally have three years (C.R.S. 13-80-101(1)(n)). A strict liability claim for a defective vehicle component generally remains on the two-year schedule (C.R.S. 13-80-101(1)(n)(II)).
The notice rule for government claims runs on a much shorter clock. If a public entity or its employee may be responsible, you must file written notice within 182 days of discovering the injury, even if you have not yet learned every element of the claim. Missing that notice forever bars the action (C.R.S. 24-10-109).
Under C.R.S. 13-80-108, the two-year and three-year periods generally start once you learned of the injury and its cause, or reasonably should have. Separate rules can affect how the deadline runs when the burned person is a child. A lawyer should confirm the exact date for your case.
