If a Colorado city, county, school district, transit agency, or the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) caused your injury, you have 182 days from the date of discovery of the injury to file a written notice of claim. That deadline comes from the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act (C.R.S. 24-10-101 et seq.), specifically C.R.S. 24-10-109. It is not the same thing as the statute of limitations, and it is far shorter. If you miss it, courts treat the failure as a jurisdictional bar, which in plain terms means the case is over before it starts, no matter how badly you were hurt or how clearly the government was at fault.
That is the single most important thing to understand about claims against public entities in Colorado. Everything else follows from it.
What the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act notice actually requires
The Colorado Governmental Immunity Act (often shortened to CGIA) starts from the old idea that the government cannot be sued at all. The statute then carves out specific situations where it can be, and attaches strict procedural conditions. The notice of claim is the main condition.
Under C.R.S. 24-10-109, the written notice must include:
- The name and address of the person making the claim, and of the attorney if one is involved
- A concise statement of the factual basis of the claim, including the date, time, place, and circumstances of the injury
- The name and address of any public employee involved, if known
- A concise statement of the nature and extent of the injury claimed
- A statement of the amount of monetary damages being requested
The notice goes to the governing body of the public entity or its attorney. If the claim is against the State of Colorado itself, which includes CDOT, the notice must also go to the Colorado Attorney General. Sending it to the wrong office, or only to the wrong office, is a real risk. So is sending it to a claims adjuster and assuming that counts.
182 days from when, exactly
The clock runs from the date of discovery of the injury, not necessarily the date of the incident. In many cases those are the same day, such as a collision with a city vehicle. In others they are not, such as an injury that is not apparent until a doctor identifies it later. Because the phrase gets litigated, the safe assumption is that the clock started the day something happened to you.
Note also that 182 days is not six months. It is 26 weeks. Counting in months and landing a few days late has ended claims.
Who counts as a public entity
People often think of the CGIA as a rule about suing the state, but the definition is broad. It can reach:
- The State of Colorado and its departments, including CDOT
- Cities, towns, and counties
- School districts and public colleges
- Regional transportation and transit districts
- Special districts, such as water, fire, metro, and park districts
- Public hospitals and their employees acting within the scope of employment
This matters because the government connection is not always obvious at the scene. A bus, a plow truck, a maintenance crew, a hospital, or a rec center may all be public. If there is any chance a public entity is involved, the 182 day clock should be treated as already running.
When immunity is waived for injury claims
Filing notice does not by itself create a right to sue. The CGIA only waives immunity in certain categories listed in C.R.S. 24-10-106. The waivers that come up most often in injury cases include:
- The operation of a motor vehicle owned or leased by the public entity
- A dangerous condition of a public building
- A dangerous condition of a public highway, road, or street that physically interferes with the movement of traffic
- A dangerous condition of a public hospital, jail, or public facility used for recreation
- The operation of a public water, gas, sanitation, electrical, power, or swimming facility
The road and highway waiver is narrower than it sounds, and it is where many CDOT and municipal claims get fought. The condition generally has to be physical and has to interfere with traffic movement, and design decisions are treated differently than failures to maintain. Snow and ice claims have their own limitations in the statute. This is the part of a public entity case where the legal analysis tends to get technical quickly.
Damages caps and why they are lower against the government
Colorado caps damages against public entities separately from the general rules that apply to private defendants. Under C.R.S. 24-10-114, the CGIA limits recovery per person and per occurrence for injuries caused by public entities, and those limits are adjusted periodically for inflation. The practical effect is that even a severe injury caused by a government entity may be subject to a ceiling well below what the same injury would support against a private party.
The CGIA also generally bars punitive or exemplary damages against a public entity, and it limits when an individual public employee can be held personally liable, which usually requires willful and wanton conduct.
These caps sit alongside the general Colorado rules. The statute of limitations for most personal injury claims is two years under C.R.S. 13-80-102, and three years for claims arising from motor vehicle accidents under C.R.S. 13-80-101. Colorado also applies modified comparative fault with a 50 percent bar, so a plaintiff found 50 percent or more at fault recovers nothing. None of those rules excuses the 182 day notice. A claim can be comfortably inside the limitations period and still be dead because notice was never filed.
Common ways people lose a claim against a public entity
The recurring patterns are procedural rather than factual:
- Not realizing a public entity was involved. The vehicle, the building, or the crew turned out to be municipal, and by the time anyone checked, the 182 days had run.
- Waiting for medical treatment to finish. Notice does not require a final diagnosis or a settled damages number. Waiting for certainty can cost the claim entirely.
- Relying on an insurance conversation. Talking with an adjuster, giving a statement, or filing an internal incident report is not the statutory notice.
- Incomplete notice. Omitting required elements, such as the factual basis or the amount of damages requested, can create an argument that the notice was defective.
- Sending it to one office only. State claims generally require service on the Attorney General in addition to the agency.
The bottom line
A claim against a Colorado public entity runs on two clocks, and the short one controls. The Colorado Governmental Immunity Act notice is due within 182 days of discovery of the injury under C.R.S. 24-10-109, it has required contents, and it has to reach the right office. Immunity is waived only in the categories listed in C.R.S. 24-10-106, and recovery is capped under C.R.S. 24-10-114. Because the deadline is jurisdictional and arrives long before the two or three year statute of limitations, anyone who suspects a city, county, district, or CDOT was involved in their injury has far less time than they probably assume.
This article is general information about Colorado law and is not legal advice. Laws change and every case is different. Talk to a licensed attorney about your situation.