The Colorado statute of limitations sets how long you have to file a claim, and the deadline depends entirely on what kind of claim it is. Most personal injury lawsuits must be filed within two years. Motor vehicle cases get three. Written contracts stretch to six years. Defamation collapses to one. Claims against a Colorado government body require a written notice within 182 days, long before any lawsuit is filed. Criminal deadlines range from six months for petty offenses to no limit at all for murder. Miss the window that applies to your situation and the claim is almost always gone for good, no matter how strong it was on the merits.
Civil Deadlines by Claim Type
Most tort claims carry a two-year filing window measured from the date of injury.1Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 Section 13-80-102 – General Limitation of Actions – Two Years Negligence, trespass, slip-and-fall injuries, dog bites, and property damage unrelated to vehicles all fall into that two-year group. Wrongful death also runs two years, measured from the date of death rather than the date of the act that caused it.
Motor vehicle accidents are the big exception. If bodily injury or property damage arose from a car, truck, or motorcycle crash, you have three years from the date of the accident to file.2Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 Section 13-80-101 – General Limitation of Actions – Three Years Confusing the vehicle rule with the general two-year tort rule is one of the most common and costly mistakes in Colorado civil practice.
Defamation runs on the shortest clock of all. Libel and slander claims must be filed within one year of the defamatory statement.3Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 Section 13-80-103 – General Limitation of Actions – One Year
Contract deadlines split on whether the agreement was written or oral. A written contract gives you six years to sue for breach.4Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 Section 13-80-103.5 – General Limitation of Actions – Six Years Oral contracts fall under the general three-year window.2Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 Section 13-80-101 – General Limitation of Actions – Three Years Fraud, misrepresentation, and concealment claims also run three years, with the clock starting when the fraud was discovered or should reasonably have been discovered.
Medical malpractice claims must be filed within two years of when the patient discovered the injury, or reasonably should have discovered it.5Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 Section 13-80-102.5 – Limitation of Actions – Medical Malpractice Colorado layers a three-year outer limit on top: even if the patient had no way of knowing about the injury, the claim is barred after three years from the malpractice itself. The one carve-out is a foreign object left inside the body during surgery, which can extend the deadline past that cap.
Claims Against the Government Need a 182-Day Notice
Suing a Colorado state or local government body, or a public employee, requires a preliminary step most people don’t know about. Before filing a lawsuit you must submit a written notice of the claim within 182 days of discovering the injury.6FindLaw. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 24 Section 24-10-109 – Notice Required That’s roughly six months, far shorter than the civil deadlines above. Colorado courts treat it as jurisdictional, which means missing it permanently bars the claim regardless of merit. Sending notice to the wrong agency or leaving out required details can be treated the same as not filing at all.
A car accident involving a government vehicle is the classic trap: it triggers both the 182-day notice and the three-year motor vehicle deadline, and missing either kills the case.
Claims against the federal government run on a separate track under the Federal Tort Claims Act. You must first file an administrative claim with the responsible federal agency within two years of the incident.7U.S. Office of Personnel Management. How Much Time Do I Have to File a Claim Under the Federal Tort Claims Act If the agency denies the claim, you have six months from the denial letter to file suit in federal court.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States
Workplace Discrimination Runs on a Tighter Clock
Employment discrimination claims don’t follow the usual civil timeline. If you were discriminated against at work based on race, sex, disability, age, or another protected characteristic, you must file a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division within 300 days of the discriminatory act.9Colorado Civil Rights Division. The Complaint Process
The federal EEOC normally allows 180 days, but that extends to 300 days in states like Colorado that run their own enforcement agency.10U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits for Filing a Charge Federal employees face a much shorter window and generally must contact their agency’s EEO counselor within 45 days. Equal Pay Act claims are the exception: those go directly to court within two years of the last discriminatory paycheck, or three years if the discrimination was willful.
Criminal Deadlines
Criminal statutes of limitations in Colorado scale with the severity of the offense.11Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 16 Section 16-5-401 – Limitation for Commencing Criminal Proceedings The most serious crimes have no deadline at all.
- No limit: murder, kidnapping, treason, and certain other serious offenses.
- Twenty years: sexual assault, if reported within that period; no limit if DNA evidence identifies the offender.
- Five years: unlawful sexual contact and some financial offenses such as securities fraud, often measured from discovery.
- Three years: most other felonies.
- Eighteen months: misdemeanors.
- Six months: petty offenses, including minor infractions like disorderly conduct.
The criminal clock can be tolled when the accused is absent from the state, pausing until they return to Colorado.
When the Clock Actually Starts
Not every deadline begins on the day the harmful event happens. Under Colorado’s discovery rule, a cause of action accrues when both the injury and its cause are known, or should have been known through reasonable diligence.12Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 Section 13-80-108 – When a Cause of Action Accrues If you couldn’t reasonably have known you were harmed, the filing window doesn’t start running until you had reason to know.
This matters most in fraud, latent injuries, and medical malpractice. A patient whose complications surface years after a surgery may not have reasonably known about the injury at the time, so the two-year malpractice clock starts from discovery rather than from the procedure itself. The discovery rule has a ceiling, though, and that’s where statutes of repose come in.
What Pauses the Clock
Several circumstances toll a Colorado statute of limitations, temporarily pausing the countdown.
Minors and Incapacitated Persons
If the person with the claim is a minor, the limitations period doesn’t begin running until they turn 18. At that point they get the normal filing window for their type of claim.13Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 Section 13-81-103 – Statute Begins to Run – When A child injured at age 10 would have until age 20 to file a tort claim. The same tolling applies to individuals who are mentally incapacitated when the claim arises.
Defendant Leaves Colorado
When a defendant leaves the state after a cause of action arises, time spent out of state may not count toward the limitations period. The clock pauses while they are gone and resumes on their return, so a potential defendant can’t simply wait out the deadline from elsewhere.
Military Service
Under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, active-duty military service is excluded from the calculation of any statute of limitations in state or federal court.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 U.S. Code 3936 – Statute of Limitations If a servicemember’s claim arises during deployment, the deadline is paused for the entire period of service. The protection runs both ways, covering claims by and against the servicemember.
Child Sexual Abuse
Colorado’s Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act removed the time limit for civil claims arising from abuse that occurred on or after January 1, 2022.15Colorado General Assembly. SB21-088 Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act The law also opened a temporary lookback window for survivors of abuse between 1960 and 2022, but that window closed on January 1, 2025. Survivors of post-2022 abuse retain the right to file at any time.
Equitable Tolling
Even without a specific tolling statute, courts can apply equitable tolling when extraordinary circumstances beyond the plaintiff’s control made timely filing impossible, and the plaintiff pursued their rights diligently. Not knowing about the deadline, or choosing to wait, doesn’t qualify.
Statutes of Repose: The Hard Outer Wall
A statute of repose is different from a statute of limitations, and the difference catches even experienced litigants. A limitations period starts when you discover the injury. A repose period starts from the defendant’s last act, whether anyone has been harmed yet or not. It’s an absolute backstop that no amount of tolling or late discovery can override.
Construction defect claims show how this works. An action against an architect, contractor, engineer, or builder must be filed within the standard two-year tort window after the claim arises, but in no case more than six years after the project was substantially completed.16Justia. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 13 Section 13-80-104 – Limitation of Actions Against Architects, Contractors, Builders, Engineers, and Others A defect found in year five gives the owner two years from discovery. A defect found in year seven gives them nothing. Medical malpractice carries its own three-year repose, as noted above.
What Happens If You Miss the Deadline
In nearly every case, missing a filing deadline means permanent loss of the claim. File a civil lawsuit after the statute has run and the defendant will move to dismiss, and the court will grant that motion. In criminal cases, a defendant can raise the expired deadline as a bar to prosecution. The law treats these windows as non-negotiable.
The stakes climb when multiple deadlines overlap. A workplace injury can involve both a workers’ compensation notification requirement (written notice to the employer within 10 working days) and a potential personal injury claim with its own statute of limitations.17Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Reporting Your Injury A government car accident runs on both the 182-day notice and the three-year vehicle deadline. Tracking parallel deadlines is where legal advice earns its keep, because the penalty for missing one is the same as missing all of them.