If you’ve been in a Denver auto accident, Colorado’s at-fault system means the driver who caused the crash — through their liability insurer — pays for the other party’s injuries and property damage.1Colorado General Assembly. Mandatory Automobile Insurance in Colorado What you do in the first hour, the first week, and the first six months shapes whether that system actually pays you what your losses are worth.
What to Do at the Scene
Colorado law requires every driver involved in a crash to stop immediately. If anyone is hurt or killed, you must stay at the scene, exchange information with the other parties, and notify law enforcement right away.2Colorado General Assembly. Colorado Code 42-4-1601 – Accidents Involving Death or Personal Injuries – Duties Within Denver city limits, the Denver Police Department takes the report; on state highways and interstates, Colorado State Patrol usually responds. For property-damage-only crashes you still must stop and exchange information, and if you hit an unattended vehicle or object and can’t find the owner, leave a visible written notice with your name, address, and vehicle registration number.3FindLaw. Colorado Code 42-4-1604 – Accidents Involving Damage to Unattended Vehicle or Property
Then build your own record of what happened. Get the other driver’s name, address, phone, insurer, and policy number. Collect contact information for passengers and bystanders and ask what they saw while it’s fresh. Photograph vehicle damage from multiple angles, license plates, skid marks, traffic signals, signs, and the overall layout of the road. If it’s safe, shoot photos before the cars are moved. Write down the time, weather, lighting, and road surface.
Order the official police report from the Denver Police Records Section and read it against your own notes.4City and County of Denver. Police Records Errors in VINs, license numbers, or the narrative are more common than you’d think, and they’re far easier to correct early than months into a claim.
Filing an Insurance Claim
In an at-fault state, you file against the other driver’s liability insurer. Call that carrier promptly, give them the police report number, and get a claim number for tracking. An adjuster will review the documentation, inspect or appraise the vehicle, and evaluate your losses against the at-fault driver’s policy limits.
Those limits may not be enough. Colorado requires only $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury, plus $15,000 for property damage.5DORA – Division of Insurance. Auto Insurance A single emergency room visit with imaging can run through $25,000 on its own. When the at-fault driver’s policy runs out before your bills do, your own underinsured motorist coverage fills the gap.
If the insurer denies the claim, you’re entitled to a written explanation. Colorado regulations require a reasonable investigation and a stated basis for any denial.1Colorado General Assembly. Mandatory Automobile Insurance in Colorado Keep a log of every call and letter. If talks stall, filing a lawsuit stays open as long as you’re inside the limitations period discussed below.
Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Coverage
Every Colorado auto liability policy must include uninsured motorist (UM) coverage unless the policyholder rejected it in writing, and the insurer must offer UM limits equal to the policyholder’s bodily injury liability limits before issuing or renewing a policy.6Justia Law. Colorado Code 10-4-609 – Insurance Protection Against Uninsured Motorists The same statute treats underinsured motorist coverage as part of UM, so your policy pays the shortfall when the at-fault driver has insurance but not enough of it.
If the other driver had no insurance at all, your UM coverage becomes your primary route to compensation. Check your declarations page to confirm whether you accepted or rejected UM/UIM and at what limits. For drivers carrying only Colorado minimums, this is often the most important line on the policy.
How Fault Affects What You Recover
Colorado uses modified comparative negligence, and this rule can quietly destroy an otherwise strong case. Your damages are reduced by whatever share of fault is assigned to you, and if that share hits 50% or more, you recover nothing at all.7Colorado.Public.Law. Colorado Code 13-21-111 – Negligence Cases
The math is straightforward. Suppose a jury puts your total losses at $100,000 and finds you 30% responsible. You take home $70,000. If the jury instead puts you at 50%, judgment goes to the defendant and you walk away with zero. Adjusters know this and will look hard for anything that lets them push a percentage point onto you: an unsignaled lane change, following too closely, using your phone. The police report, witness statements, and any traffic or surveillance footage all feed into that fault split, which is why documentation at the scene matters so much later.
Deadlines That Can End Your Case
Colorado gives you three years from the date of a motor vehicle accident to file a lawsuit for bodily injury or property damage.8Justia Law. Colorado Code 13-80-101 – General Limitation of Actions Miss it and the court will almost certainly dismiss the case regardless of its merits. Three years feels long until you factor in the time needed to reach maximum medical improvement, assemble records, and try to settle. Starting early gives you leverage; waiting until month 34 gives you none.
Claims Involving Government Vehicles
A far shorter deadline applies if the other vehicle was a city bus, snowplow, police cruiser, or any other government-owned vehicle. Under the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act, you must file a written notice of claim within 182 days of discovering the injury. This is jurisdictional. Miss the 182-day window and the law bars your claim permanently.9Justia Law. Colorado Code 24-10-109 – Notice Required Six months passes quickly when you’re focused on treatment, and this deadline catches people off guard more than any other in Colorado accident law.
Minors
If the injured person is a minor without a legal representative, the statute of limitations is paused until the disability ends, so a child injured in a crash gets at least two years after turning 18. If a parent or guardian is already acting as the minor’s representative, the normal three-year clock runs, but the representative is guaranteed at least two years from the date of appointment to act.10Justia Law. Colorado Code 13-81-103 – Effect of Disability
What You Can Recover
Damages fall into three categories: economic, non-economic, and in rare cases, exemplary.
Economic Damages
These are the costs you can prove with a bill, receipt, or pay stub. Emergency room charges, surgery, physical therapy, prescriptions, ambulance fees, future medical care your doctors say you’ll need, lost wages, reduced future earning capacity, vehicle repair or replacement, and rental car expenses all belong here.
Non-Economic Damages
These cover harm that doesn’t come with a receipt: chronic pain, loss of enjoyment of life, permanent disfigurement, and emotional distress. Colorado caps them, and the cap changed sharply in 2025. For any civil action filed on or after January 1, 2025, the non-economic damages limit is $1,500,000.11Justia Law. Colorado Code 13-21-102.5 – Limitations on Damages for Noneconomic Loss or Injury That’s roughly six times the prior inflation-adjusted cap of about $642,180 that applied to claims accruing before 2024.12Colorado Secretary of State. Adjusted Limitations for Damages The new $1.5 million cap holds until January 1, 2028, after which it adjusts for inflation every two years.13Colorado General Assembly. HB24-1472 Raise Damage Limit Tort Actions
Exemplary Damages
Colorado calls punitive damages “exemplary damages.” A court can award them when the at-fault driver’s conduct involved fraud, malice, or willful and wanton disregard for others’ safety. Drunk driving and street racing are classic examples. The award can’t exceed actual damages, though a judge can raise it to as much as three times actual damages if the defendant repeated the dangerous behavior during the lawsuit.14Colorado.Public.Law. Colorado Code 13-21-102 – Exemplary Damages Exemplary damages are uncommon in routine fender-benders but come up more often than people expect in impaired or reckless driving cases.
Taxes on a Settlement
Not every dollar in a settlement check is yours to keep. Compensation for physical injuries or physical sickness is generally not taxable, and that includes pain and suffering tied to a physical injury, so long as you didn’t deduct the related medical expenses on a prior return.15Internal Revenue Service. Settlements – Taxability Emotional distress damages follow the same rule when they stem from a physical injury; emotional distress not connected to a physical injury is taxable.
The portion of a settlement that replaces lost wages is taxable, because it stands in for income you would have paid tax on. Exemplary damages are always taxable, reported as “Other Income” on Schedule 1 of Form 1040.15Internal Revenue Service. Settlements – Taxability If your settlement combines several categories, make sure the written agreement breaks out each component. A lump-sum check with no allocation hands the IRS room to treat more of it as taxable than it should be.