Yes, Colorado law limits awards for both the injury itself and pain and suffering. What can you do about Metro Districts? Meat In Day is coming, got you a list of events.
Live in a Metro District and you're tired of being taxed back into the Stone Age by the developer's cronies on the board?
Get involved.
I have preached more than once about how getting involved in local issues has an immediate and tangible effect on your life. I'm not advocating that you never pay attention to Federal issues, I'm not saying you should ignore statewide issues, but I am saying that those moves will be a while in percolating down to the bills you pay on a monthly basis.
The issues involving things like Metro Districts and your City/County government have a much more immediate impact on your life and the really great news is that the numbers involved in effecting change are manageable on a shoestring. We're not talking a statewide initiative here where it will be millions of dollars to get it across the finish line.
We're talking (in the case of a Metro District recall election highighted below in the linked article) 300 valid signatures. 300.
Now, I'm not a fan of recalls per se, but I posted this to bring to your attention the fact that local moves are doable with some committed people and without vast outlays of cash.
If you're in a Metro District, do your research and learn about your board and how to get on it and/or how to provide comments. If you find something that irks you enough, consider a move like the one below.
If that's not your passion or if you're not in a metro district, find some other way to comment and get involved locally.
For most things all you will be out is your time and you will have the chance to greatly and immediately affect your life and the lives of those around you.
https://denvergazette.com/news/denver-ebert-district-ousts-hawthorne/article_94888284-cc29-11ee-85fd-4749fc7bf34c.html#google_vignette
Related:
The image at the top of this section comes from the link below. If you wanted some context and/or some numbers on Metro Districts, it will get you started. It was a study commissioned by realtors to help educate potential home buyers.
Good one to keep in case you are going to buy into a Metro District or know someone who will.
https://ires-net.com/what-is-a-metro-district/
Yes, Colorado law limits awards for both the injury itself and pain and suffering.
And I will tell you something missing from the Sun article linked first below. I'm going to make an argument for limits, though let me be clear that I think it's reasonable to open a discussion as to the current amounts.
If you would like to see the current law around the limits on pain and suffering, I included a link to the relevant statute below the Sun article.
Business runs better on certainty. Risk is always there, uncertainty is always there, but things like insurance, planning for future costs, and the like are much easier when both are minimized.
And you have to remember that our economy is not business vs. everything (and everyone) else. We are all, in ways large and small, tied to business in this state. It gives you a job. It gives us a tax base. It gets groceries in the stores.
So when I say business runs better on certainty, I'm not arguing this from the standpoint of trying to make life easier for capitalists or businesses around the state. Outside of abuse, when business succeeds here, we do too.
The threat of lawsuits and damage awards that can swing wildly or that take off into the stratosphere introduce an element of chaos that is hard to plan for. This is the rationale for damage limits. Absent truly bad behavior or bad faith, the limits provide companies and those that insure them surety as to the upper limit on what liability they'll have in the course of doing business.
This is, as is covered the Sun article,** something that you probably won't have to stretch to understand irks many a plaintiff's attorney in this state. They want no cap because then they (and, to be fair here, their clients) can get more money. Irks them enough to put forward an initiative currently working its way through the usual steps.
I will await the actual language, but if the initiative removes all limits entirely, I'm a NO on that one.
As I wrote above, I'm open to a discussion about raising the limits and/or revisiting what kinds of things make a company exempt from the damage caps, but I'm not for an across-the-board removal of caps.
We already make it hard enough on business in this state, we already have so much of a burden that piling this on top is shortsighted in my view.
**I'm not sure, but I'm near to certain this was another pitch by a skilled attorney and/or PR outfit that (as is often the case) found a sympathetic ear at the Sun. Oh, would that all causes and PR efforts in this state were weighed equally by that "nonpartisan" paper.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/02/23/oil-worker-personal-injury-awards/
https://casetext.com/statute/colorado-revised-statutes/title-13-courts-and-court-procedure/damages-and-limitations-on-actions/article-21-damages/part-1-general-provisions/section-13-21-1025-limitations-on-damages-for-noneconomic-loss-or-injury
Meat In Day is coming!
Started as a refutation of Gov Polis' Meat Out Day proclamation, Meat In Day has endured for a few years now and has turned into a fun event (in addition to one that generates a significant amount of charitable giving).
If you live in or near the Front Range, let me suggest to you that you find a Meat In event in one of the far flung parts of the state and make a day of it. You'll get a chance to meet some good people, eat some good food, and learn about a part of the state (and an industry) that you might know little about now.
I shared a compendium at my companion FB page and that post is linked first below.
There wasn't a huge amount of detail about Mesa County's event, so I added that as a comment. For convenience's sake, I included Mesa's FB post and their flyer attached.
I also found a run down by the FencePost. It's linked third below. Get out there and enjoy some of the good things Colorado has to offer!
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0k12KyTpQoD1PgtAGurFEqwehE7sgWnWXmN8Eh9KdzpLUvB9ZQb2eQy3AfPfAb4gil&id=100064648840728
https://www.facebook.com/mesacountycattlemens/posts/pfbid036ptJ23NKcgREyvtTLcUbtetKK9re44p8JUhmPde8k4DUpAPP9UyyVbFhDNvecDdRl
https://www.thefencepost.com/news/colorado-meat-in-events-guide/?fbclid=IwAR0N65h6yxqvhuzVVv7sTpNZ7Wz3NvFgDZDil2Wfp2dV8Elwkjj8LA_eCpI
> Business runs better on certainty. Risk is always there, uncertainty is always there, but things like insurance, planning for future costs, and the like are much easier when both are minimized.
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Assertion: Individuals -- both as consumers and as workers -- also do better with certainty and minimal risk.
Question: Would you support a legislative ban on foreclosure by H.O.A. corporations ?
Or do you think it is a reasonable punishment to take somebody's home for not paying H.O.A. fees -- whether those fees are regular assessments, fines, attorney fees, and/or other junk fees ?
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> Homeowners associations have been called private governments because they do many things that governments do. HOAs hold elections, provide services, tax residents, and regulate behavior within their jurisdictions, but as legal entities, they are not governments.
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> To raise revenue for goods and services, HOAs lack taxing authority but not the power to charge assessments, which makes their inability to tax more a legal distinction than a real constraint. HOAs’ enforcement powers for failure to pay assessments equal those of local governments and allow them to place liens or foreclose on property, a power that the courts have upheld repeatedly.
>
> -- Barbara Coyle McCabe. “Homeowner Associations As Private Governments”. Public Administration Review. July/August 2011. At page 535 and page 537.
> @ https://web.archive.org/web/20170809074411/http://illinois-online.org/krassa/ps410/Readings/HOAs/McCabe%20HOA%20as%20Private%20Government.pdf
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> Val Ford and his wife, Ann Thomas, have had escalating problems with their HOA. Now the organization has foreclosed on their home because of $9,000 in unpaid fines and penalties. (photo caption)
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> Ask Val Ford whether a homeowners association can do harm, and he will respond that his destroyed his health and wealth.
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> Ford, 72, and his wife, Ann, are on the verge of losing their home after the Master HOA for the Southcreek Townhomes in Englewood foreclosed on them.
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> The HOA, which charges dues of $240 a year, has amassed $9,000 in fines and late fees against the ailing couple in a nine-year battle that started with a misplaced trash can that Ford used to collect debris from a nearby community mailbox.
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> In late 2010, before his wife’s surgery for breast cancer, the HOA won a court order allowing it to garnish their bank fund. The HOA took all the money the couple had saved for the surgery.
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> “Touching HOA law is always a bit dicey around here,” [Colorado State Senator Morgan] Carroll said of the vested interests surrounding the state’s HOA laws.
>
> -- "Horror Stories Prompt Industry Group To Ask Colorado To Regulate HOA Managers". Denver Post. February 12, 2012.
> @ http://www.denverpost.com/ci_19951732