A U-Turn She Never Saw Coming: How Our Castle Rock Car Accident Lawyers Fought Back
Result Snapshot
| Case type | Car accident (crossing-path U-turn collision) |
|---|---|
| Injuries | Total knee replacement, cervical and lumbar spine injuries, PTSD and adjustment disorder |
| Location | Castle Rock, Douglas County, Colorado |
| Resolution | Settlement reached through full litigation, $740,000 |
| Attorneys | Todd A. Travis and Jordan M. Travis |
| Year resolved | 2024 |
The Short Version
A quiet afternoon drive through Douglas County turned into years of surgery, therapy, and pain for a Castle Rock grandmother, all because another driver made a U-turn she should never have attempted. When that driver’s insurance company decided it would rather stall than pay, our client did not fold. She called Rampart Injury Lawyers, and we took the fight all the way through the courthouse doors.
This was a car accident case built the hard way, one medical record and one deposition at a time. The insurer blamed our client’s age and an old knee condition for injuries the crash plainly caused. We answered with board-certified experts and a mountain of proof. The case resolved through litigation for $740,000, money that gave a hurting grandmother the resources to keep getting the care her doctors say she still needs.
Wondering where to turn after a crash when the insurance company is already lining up reasons to pay you less? Here is how this one unfolded.
What Happened
It was a dry, clear afternoon on a busy Douglas County highway. Our client, a grandmother driving the family minivan, was moving through traffic with the right of way. An unfamiliar driver in an SUV tried a sudden U-turn from the eastbound lane, cutting straight across her path. There was no time to react. The front of her minivan slammed into the side of the SUV. The impact was violent enough to spin the other vehicle across the road and onto the far shoulder. Her airbag fired. Both of her knees drove into the dashboard.
The Colorado State Patrol trooper who worked the scene noted that the other driver was unfamiliar with the area and had turned across our client’s lane. She had done nothing wrong. She was simply the person who could not avoid a crash she did not cause.
Injuries and Medical Impact
Like a lot of people after a hard collision, our client did not feel the full weight of her injuries at the scene. She drove herself away and later went to a local emergency room for a forearm injury from the airbag. Within days, the rest caught up with her. Her neck, low back, and both knees turned into constant pain.
The imaging told the story. Her cervical spine showed disc disease across multiple levels along with joint arthrosis. An MRI of her lower back found disc bulges at four levels, including narrowing of the central canal at one of them. An MRI of her left knee revealed a complex meniscus tear with a displaced fragment, a ligament sprain, cartilage loss, a large fluid cyst behind the joint, and bursitis.
The treatment stretched on for years. She completed 46 chiropractic and massage sessions. She started pain management and was prescribed nerve pain medication. She was sent for spinal injections and knee injections. She finished 32 physical therapy sessions. In the spring of 2023, she underwent a total knee replacement at a Colorado hospital, then more physical therapy to recover from the surgery itself.
The harm was not only physical. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, an adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety and depressed mood, and mild to moderate cognitive communication problems tied to the crash. She completed 17 counseling and cognitive therapy sessions. Even after all of that, her treating specialists concluded that most of her injuries had not reached maximum medical improvement and that she would need care well into the future. The pain took away simple things. Walking. Exercise. Getting down on the floor to play with her grandchildren. She had also moved to Colorado during her recovery, which stacked new stress on top of the physical toll.
Legal and Insurance Challenges
Look, insurance companies do not hand over fair value because someone is hurting. This one had a playbook, and it ran every page.
First, it went quiet. We sent a detailed pre-suit demand backed by the medical proof, and the carrier let the deadline pass. Then it came back with a flat rejection and a demand for years of unrelated prior records, the kind of fishing expedition designed to bury a claim in paperwork. It seized on our client’s earlier, unrelated knee surgery and used it as an excuse to discount everything. When the case moved into litigation, the defense hired its own physician, who tried to pin roughly half of our client’s spinal injuries on age rather than the collision.
That is the oldest move in the book. Blame the crash on the person who got hurt.
How Rampart Built the Case
We built it one record at a time, and then we out-worked the other side.
We gathered more than a thousand pages of medical documentation and turned it into a clear, evidence-backed demand. When the carrier ignored that demand, we did not send another letter. We filed suit in Douglas County District Court and drove the case through full discovery. That meant depositions, mandatory disclosures, and expert reports, all the machinery of real litigation that most claims never see.
When the defense lined up its experts, we lined up ours. We retained board-certified specialists to answer the age-causation argument point by point. Our experts documented what the medicine actually showed. The collision, not the calendar, caused these injuries. A quiet, non-surgical knee condition sits there for years and asks nothing of you. It does not send you to the operating table. This crash did. That surgery happened because of the U-turn, and we proved it.
The Result
The case resolved through the litigation process for $740,000.
What drove that number was not luck. It was documented causation, expert testimony that held up under pressure, and a refusal to accept the discount the carrier wanted from day one. The recovery gave our client the resources to keep up with the care her specialists say she still needs, and it closed a hard chapter that started the moment another driver turned across her lane.
Every case stands on its own facts. This result reflects what happened here, and it is not a promise about the outcome of any other case.
Colorado Injury Law Takeaway
If you are researching a Colorado car accident claim, a few pieces of the law matter more than most.
The clock. In Colorado, a car accident injury claim generally must be filed within three years of the crash under C.R.S. § 13-80-101(1)(n). That is longer than the two-year window for most other injury cases, but it is not forever, and settlement talks do not pause it. Miss the deadline and the claim is usually gone for good.
Shared blame. Colorado uses a modified comparative negligence rule under C.R.S. § 13-21-111. You can still recover if you were partly at fault, as long as your share is less than 50 percent, but your recovery drops by your percentage of fault. Insurers know this, which is why they work so hard to shift blame onto the injured person. A police note that the other driver caused the crash, like the one in this case, is strong evidence in that fight.
Old injuries. This is the one that saved our client’s case. A prior, symptom-free condition is not a defense in Colorado. Under long-settled law, a wrongdoer takes the injured person as they find them, and aggravating a pre-existing condition into a painful, surgical one is a compensable harm. See McLaughlin v. BNSF Railway Co. and the Colorado Pattern Civil Jury Instructions, Chapter 6. If an insurer is blaming your age or an old X-ray for injuries a crash made real, the law is on your side, as long as you can prove causation. That is what experts are for.
Talk to a Colorado Injury Lawyer
Hurt in a crash around Castle Rock or anywhere in Douglas County, and already feeling the insurance company push back? You do not have to face them alone. We are a trial-focused firm, and we build cases to win, not to settle cheap. Call Rampart Injury Lawyers at (303) 766-8766 for a free, no-pressure conversation about what happened to you.
We handle injury cases on a contingency fee basis, which means you pay no attorney fee unless we recover compensation for you. In a contingency fee matter, a client may still be responsible for costs and expenses, and we will walk you through exactly how that works before you decide to hire us.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Colorado follows the rule that a wrongdoer takes you as they find you. If a collision turned a quiet, pre-existing condition into a painful or surgical one, that worsening is a compensable injury. The key is proving with medical evidence that the crash, not the passage of time, caused the change. See McLaughlin v. BNSF Railway Co.
Generally three years from the date of the crash for injuries arising out of the use of a motor vehicle, under C.R.S. § 13-80-101(1)(n). Talking to the insurance company does not stop that clock. Only filing a lawsuit in court does.
That is a common defense, and it is often beatable. In this case, the carrier tried to blame aging for injuries the crash caused. We answered with board-certified experts who tied the injuries directly to the collision. The right expert proof can take that argument apart.
Disclaimers
Every case is different. Prior results, including the outcome described on this page, do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Each matter depends on its own facts, evidence, injuries, and the law that applies.
This page is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Rampart Injury Lawyers. For advice about your own situation, speak with a licensed Colorado attorney.
Contacting Rampart Injury Lawyers through this website, by email, or by phone does not by itself create an attorney-client relationship and does not make you a client. Please do not send confidential or time-sensitive information until an attorney-client relationship has been established in writing.
Rampart Injury Lawyers is a trade name of Travis Legal Offices, LLC. Todd A. Travis is the attorney responsible for the content of this page. The firm maintains one office at 333 Perry Street, Suite 203, Castle Rock, CO 80104, and serves injured people throughout the surrounding communities along the I-25 corridor.
