Who Is Liable for a Burn Injury in Colorado?

Most people know roughly how they were burned. Far fewer know who is responsible for it, and in Colorado that question decides more than blame. It decides which insurance policies are available, and available coverage is often what sets the ceiling on a serious burn case.

Here are the routes that come up most, and what has to be shown for each.

Premises liability

Burns at a restaurant, hotel, gym, apartment building, or store usually run through Colorado's premises liability statute, C.R.S. 13-21-115. What you have to prove depends on your status on the property. An invitee, such as a business customer, is owed more than a licensee, and a trespasser is owed least. The statute itself says a licensee "includes a social guest," so a burn at a friend's house is generally judged by the licensee standard, not the business-customer one. Scalding tap water, an unguarded heater, a grease fire in a kitchen accessible to guests, and a defective water heater in a rental are common fact patterns.

The recurring issue is notice: did the property owner know, or should they have known, and did they have a reasonable chance to fix it. Prior complaints, maintenance logs, and inspection records are where that is won or lost, and they are ordinarily obtained through the case rather than handed over on request. More on how these claims are built is on our premises liability page.

Product liability

When a heater, battery, space heater, e-cigarette, pressure cooker, water heater, or vehicle component causes a burn, the claim may run against the manufacturer, the distributor, or the retailer. Common product-defect theories include manufacturing defects, design defects, and inadequate warnings or instructions.

Preserve the product. This is the single most important thing to know here, and it is the most commonly missed. Do not discard it, do not return it to the retailer, and do not let anyone take it for testing without documentation. Keep the packaging and the manual if they exist. A product claim without the product is a much harder case, and sometimes an impossible one. Our product liability page covers the defect theories in more detail.

Workplace burns and the third-party claim

If you were burned at work, workers' compensation is generally the exclusive remedy against your employer. Under C.R.S. 8-41-102, an employer that has complied with the act, and its comp carrier, are not subject to "any other liability" for the injury. That is where many people stop, and it is often too early to stop.

Workers' compensation covers medical treatment and a portion of lost wages. It does not pay for pain, suffering, or disfigurement. But if someone other than your employer contributed, a subcontractor, an equipment manufacturer, a property owner, a maintenance contractor, that third party can be pursued separately, and that claim does include the categories comp leaves out. C.R.S. 8-41-203 expressly lets an injured worker take comp benefits and also pursue the other party "to recover any damages in excess of the compensation available." The same statute treats payment of comp as an assignment of the third-party claim to the carrier, so the two claims have to be coordinated from the start.

One detail in that statute is easy to miss. When an injured worker makes a demand on a third party, the worker must also give written notice within ten days to the Division of Workers' Compensation and to everyone who may be responsible for paying comp benefits. It is a procedural step, but it is the kind that causes trouble later if it is skipped. Our Colorado workers' comp benefits guide covers the comp side.

Construction, oil and gas, restaurant, and utility burns frequently involve multiple companies on one site. Which entity owned the equipment, which one maintained it, and which one controlled the area are the questions that open or close this door.

Motor vehicle fires

Burns from a crash follow the auto claim, with the added possibility of a product claim if a fuel system, battery, or restraint system behaved in a way it should not have. Deadlines split here: a claim arising from the use or operation of a motor vehicle is generally three years under C.R.S. 13-80-101(1)(n), while a product claim against a manufacturer or seller is generally two years under C.R.S. 13-80-106, regardless of the substantive theory. Underinsured motorist coverage may provide an additional source of recovery when an at-fault driver caused the injury and the available liability coverage is insufficient; see how underinsured motorist coverage works in Colorado.

Public entities: the short clock

If a city, county, transit agency, school district, or public utility is involved, the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act applies. It requires written notice within 182 days after discovery of the injury under C.R.S. 24-10-109, well before the ordinary statute of limitations, and missing it can end an otherwise strong claim outright. If any public body is anywhere in your facts, this is the first thing to handle, not the last. Immunity is the starting rule under the Act, and C.R.S. 24-10-106 lists the specific situations where it is waived, including, with limits, the operation of a public entity's motor vehicle by an employee on the job, a dangerous condition of a public building, and the operation and maintenance of a public gas, electrical, or power facility. Whether a burn fits one of those categories is a threshold question. Our guide to the 182-day government notice walks through the notice itself.

Comparative fault, honestly

Colorado uses modified comparative fault. In an ordinary negligence claim under C.R.S. 13-21-111, your recovery drops by your share of responsibility, and at 50 percent or more there is no recovery. That bar does not apply the same way to product liability claims. C.R.S. 13-21-406 says the injured person's fault "shall not bar" recovery in a product case; it reduces damages in proportion instead. Our comparative negligence guide explains the general rule. In burn cases the argument is usually some version of "it was obviously hot" or "there was a warning." Whether that holds depends on what the scene actually looked like, which is why photographs, witness names, and the incident report matter far more in the first week than they will ever matter again.

Why more than one route is worth checking

These are not exclusive. A restaurant burn can involve the property owner and the manufacturer of the equipment. A workplace burn can involve a comp claim and a third-party claim at the same time. Since available coverage frequently limits the outcome more than the injury does, finding a second responsible party is often worth more to a client than any argument about the value of the injury itself.

When to talk to a Colorado burn injury attorney

Most of what decides responsibility in a burn case is gathered, or lost, early. That is the practical reason to talk to a burn injury attorney in Colorado sooner rather than later, even if you are still in treatment and nowhere near thinking about a claim.

The early work is mostly unglamorous. Sending preservation letters so the heater, battery, or vehicle is not scrapped. Identifying every company that owned, maintained, or controlled the equipment or the area. Checking whether a public body is involved and calendaring the 182-day notice if so. Sending the ten-day notice required when a workplace burn has a third-party claim. Finding every policy that might apply before anyone starts talking about numbers.

If you do talk to a lawyer, it helps to bring what you have: photographs of the scene and the injury, the product and its packaging if one was involved, the incident or police report, the names of witnesses, any workers' compensation paperwork, and the names of your treating providers. You do not need to have figured out who is at fault. Sorting that out is the job.

The clock also matters. Colorado's general deadline for a negligence claim is two years under C.R.S. 13-80-102(1)(a), and the motor vehicle, product, and public-entity rules described above can change that for a particular claim. Our Colorado personal injury statute of limitations guide sets out the full picture. Because burn wounds and scars change for a year or more, there is usually room to let the medical picture settle before valuing a claim, but not to wait on preserving evidence or meeting notice deadlines.

We represent injured people in Denver and across Colorado and are available to evaluate burn-injury claims. No attorney fee unless we recover for you, and we do not charge case costs if we do not win. If you are not sure who was responsible, that is an ordinary question to bring us, not something to work out first. Call (720) 432-7032 or reach our Denver burn injury lawyers. Related: what drives Colorado burn settlement value, how burn degree classification affects a claim, and scarring and disfigurement damages in Colorado.