How to Prove a Colorado Negligence Claim
Denver-based personal injury attorney R. Mack Babcock and associates can prove negligence in your case
Negligence is defined as the failure to behave in a way that a responsible person would have in the same situation. This lack of reasonable care can either be an action, or an act of omission, when there is a duty to take steps to prevent harm from befalling another person.
In legal terms, negligence is a concept used by plaintiffs to receive compensation for injuries or damages that have been incurred by the defendant’s lack of due diligence or regard for others’ safety. While most negligence claims are based on common law and similar among different states, individual state laws can have subtle yet important distinctions in how liability is determined and how much damages can be awarded.
Colorado Negligence Law
In Colorado negligence lawsuits, a defendant is only obligated to compensate the plaintiff for the proportion of the injury the court determines them to be at fault. For example, if the plaintiff is found to be 25 percent responsible for the accident, then they can only sue for 75 percent of the total costs.
If, however, the court determines the claimant’s negligence is greater than that of the defendant’s, the plaintiff may not recover any damages at all. This is known as contributory negligence.
Colorado’s contributory negligence limits also set a maximum amount you can recover financially for certain damages. For example, a claimant may recover up to $1 million in a medical malpractice case, but not more than $300,000 for non-economic damages (i.e. pain and suffering or loss of consortium).
Types of Negligence
The most common types of negligence claims are
Gross Negligence: When an individual acts unreasonable, or does something that a reasonable person would not do, thus resulting in an injury. The defendant willfully showed a complete disregard for another person’s safety. (For example: A person drives while intoxicated, resulting in a serious drunk driving crash that injures or kills another driver.)
Vicarious Negligence: When an individual fails to take reasonable action to prevent harm from befalling another person. The defendant is held liable because of a failure to responsibly supervise another person or animal that caused the injury. (For example: A dog owner fails to properly secure their pet, resulting in an animal attack that seriously harms or kills a child.)
Both forms of negligence fall under negligence law, and the case is filed against an individual, company, or party responsible for the injury. Other types of negligence lawsuits include comparative fault, contributory negligence, as well as mixed contributory & comparative negligence.
Negligence is by far the largest type of legal tort, and can fall under many different legal categories involving personal injury, such as:
- Medical malpractice
- Defective product
- Inadequate security
Proving a Negligence Claim
To successfully prove negligence in a lawsuit, the plaintiff must establish that the defendant had a responsibility to the victim, that the defendant breached proper conduct by failing to fulfill their required duty, and that the defendant’s negligent behavior resulted in injury or damage to the plaintiff.
Simply put, proving fault in a negligence case can be broken into four key elements:
- Duty. The defendant had a legal responsibility to protect the plaintiff from harm.
- Breach. The defendant broke their legal duty by acting negligently or failing to act appropriately.
- Causation. The defendant’s action or inaction directly caused the plaintiff injury or harm.
- Damages. The defendant has assets or the financial ability to provide compensation to the plaintiff for damages.
While the four factor approach to negligence is helpful in identifying whether or not an injury warrants legal action, it fails to distinguish between two distinctly important concepts in the cause/effect relationship of negligence: factual causation vs. proximate cause.
Factual and Proximate Cause
Taking factual and proximate cause into account, David Owen—Carolina’s Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina and author of the article “The Five Elements of Negligence” published in the Hofstra Law Review—considers the four system standard “misleading,” saying: “Negligence thus is most usefully stated as comprised of five, not four, elements: (1) duty, (2) breach, (3) cause in fact, (4) proximate cause, and (5) harm…”
The third of Owen’s elements of negligence, and the first branch relating to cause, is factual causation, which addresses the specific question of whether a defendant’s wrong behavior can be factually linked to the plaintiff’s harm. Factual causation is the actual connection between negligence and the damage the victim sustained.
Owens uses the example of a pedestrian hit by a speeding driver when they stepped off a curb. In a negligence lawsuit, the victim must not only prove that the defendant’s car hit them, and that the driver was being negligent, but also that it was the excess speed that actually caused the harm. If the evidence suggests the driver would have hit the pedestrian even if they were going the speed limit, then the accident was caused by the driver’s misconduct, not by negligence.
The second branch, proximate cause, though linked to factual causation, is a separate element altogether. Proximate cause explores whether the relationship between the defendant’s wrong and the plaintiff’s harm was sufficiently close, or proximate, rather than remote.
The foundation of proximate cause rests on the idea of “foreseeability”—namely that the responsibility for harm should be based on how an actor’s choices led to that harm. This prevents people from being held liable for damages that fall outside of their foreseeable scope of risk.
Having a greater understanding of causation in a negligence claim is important because as Owens says: “Thousands of people every day are injured or killed in car collisions, slip-and-fall accidents, and myriad other kinds of accidents. While many such incidents are attributable to the negligence of one or more persons, many others result from simple bad luck or the careless behavior of victims themselves.”
Knowing the difference is fundamental in preparing a negligence lawsuit.
Get Help Proving Fault in Your Colorado Negligence Case
At the Babcock Law Firm, our Denver personal injury attorneys understand the pain that someone else’s negligence can cause. We are committed to passionately representing victims of negligence and their families.
Whether you are located in Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, or another Colorado city, our personal injury law firm possesses extensive experience with investigating and establishing fault. Don’t hesitate to seek out an attorney to at least discuss —and possibly represent you — in a case involving negligence.
We invite you to learn more about how representation works, and then schedule a comprehensive free consultation today.
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