Can I Sue My Insurance Company for Emotional Distress in Colorado?

The letter usually shows up after months of silence: your own insurance company needs “additional time to complete its evaluation” of a claim you filed long ago, while the medical bills go to collections and you stop sleeping through the night. Colorado law treats that kind of stalling as more than bad customer service, and in the right case it lets you sue your insurer for the anxiety and stress it caused, not just for the money it held back. Below we walk through when that lawsuit exists, why it works against your own carrier but not the other driver’s, and what proof holds up in front of a jury. An insurance bad faith lawyer at Boesen Law can read your delay letters and tell you where you stand, and you pay no attorney fee unless we recover compensation for you.

Yes, but It Depends on Whose Insurance Company Treated You This Way

The first question is not how upset you are. It is whose policy the money is coming from, because Colorado gives very different rights to people claiming under their own coverage and people claiming against someone else’s.

Claims Under Your Own Policy

When you ask your own insurer to pay benefits you bought, you are what Colorado law calls a first-party claimant. That covers collision and medical payments coverage on your auto policy, homeowners and renters claims, health and disability benefits, and one situation crash victims often miss: an uninsured motorist claim you bring against your own carrier after an at-fault driver with no coverage, or not enough coverage, hurts you. In every one of those relationships, your insurer owes you a duty of good faith and fair dealing.

Claims Against the Other Driver’s Insurer

If the company giving you the runaround insures the person who hit you, the picture changes. The definition of first-party claimant in C.R.S. § 10-3-1115 expressly leaves out third parties claiming against someone else’s liability policy. That carrier’s duty of good faith runs to its own customer, the at-fault driver, so your remedy is usually an injury claim against the driver, with his insurer paying the result. There are still smart ways to handle the other driver’s insurance company so its delays do not cost you.

When a Delay Crosses the Line

Slow is not automatically unlawful. Under § 10-3-1115, a delay or denial is unreasonable when the insurer held up payment of a covered benefit without a reasonable basis for doing so. Colorado’s unfair claim settlement practices statute, C.R.S. § 10-3-1104(1)(h), gives a picture of what insurers are not supposed to do, including failing to act reasonably promptly on communications, refusing to pay without a reasonable investigation, making you submit substantially the same information twice before it pays, and lowballing an insured so badly that a lawsuit is the only way to get paid.

If your claim sits under your own policy and any of that sounds familiar, Boesen Law can compare the insurer’s conduct against these standards before you decide what to do next.

For answers to your questions, call:
(303) 999-9999

Two Ways to Sue, and Only One of Them Pays for Emotional Distress

Colorado gives first-party claimants two separate legal tools. They can be filed together, but they pay for different things, and people are often surprised which one covers the sleepless nights.

• The statutory claim. C.R.S. § 10-3-1116 lets a first-party claimant whose covered benefits were unreasonably delayed or denied recover two times the covered benefit, plus reasonable attorney fees and court costs. You do not have to prove emotional harm for this claim, but it also does not pay for emotional harm. It is measured by the benefit the insurer withheld.
• The common-law bad faith claim. This is a tort claim. It asks whether the insurer acted unreasonably and knew it, or recklessly disregarded that its conduct was unreasonable. Because it is a tort, the damages follow the harm, which can include anxiety, fear, humiliation, and stress, along with economic losses like late fees and damaged credit.
• The 2004 turning point. In Goodson v. American Standard Insurance Co., the Colorado Supreme Court held that an insured can recover emotional distress damages for bad faith even without showing substantial property or economic loss. Ms. Goodson’s carrier disputed her personal injury protection benefits for about 18 months before paying roughly $8,000 in medical bills, and the court recognized that an unreasonable denial can cause real anxiety and uncertainty even when the money is eventually paid.
• The ceiling. Emotional distress is a form of non-economic loss, and Colorado caps non-economic damages. House Bill 24-1472 raised the general cap to $1.5 million beginning January 1, 2025.
• No double recovery. Section 10-3-1116 says it does not limit other statutory or common-law actions, but the same damages cannot be collected twice.

Which of these types of damages fit your situation depends on the insurer’s conduct and on what the delay did to your life, and Boesen Law builds the case around both.

What Proof Holds Up: An Evidence Checklist

Juries do not award emotional distress damages because someone says they were stressed. They award them when the record shows what the insurer did, when it did it, and how your life changed as a result. Start gathering these now:

1. A dated claim timeline. Write down when you reported the loss, every document you sent, and every response, including the gaps where you heard nothing.
2. Every delay and denial letter. Keep the envelopes too. Form letters asking for “more time” or for records you already sent are some of the strongest exhibits in these cases.
3. Your own call log. Note the date, the adjuster’s name, and what was promised. The insurer keeps internal claim notes, and in a lawsuit those notes can be requested and compared against yours.
4. Treatment records that name the cause. If you saw a counselor, therapist, or your regular doctor for anxiety, insomnia, or depression while the claim dragged on, those records carry weight, especially when they mention the insurance dispute.
5. The financial fallout. Collection notices, late fees, a drop in your credit score, money borrowed from family, a car you could not replace. These show the pressure was real and measurable.
6. People who saw the change. A spouse, a coworker, or a friend who watched you withdraw or lose sleep can describe it in a way a medical chart cannot.
7. A written record kept at the time. Short notes or journal entries made while it was happening are far more believable than recollections pieced together a year later.

You do not need all seven to have a claim. Civil cases are decided on the burden of proof known as a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not, and our job at Boesen Law is to assemble what you have into a story a jury can follow.

Complaints, Deadlines, and What Happens Before a Lawsuit

Many people’s first move is a complaint to the Colorado Division of Insurance, and it is often a good one. You can file a complaint online through the Division’s consumer portal or by mail. The Division reports that in fiscal year 2023-24 it recovered $4,995,340 on auto insurance complaints alone, and more than $26.4 million across all lines. A complaint can move a stalled file. It is not a lawsuit, though, and it does not put a dollar value on the months of stress the delay caused.

Deadlines matter as well. Common-law bad faith is a tort, and Colorado’s general two-year limit for tort actions in C.R.S. § 13-80-102 is the clock to watch. For the statutory claim, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the one-year deadline for penalty actions does not apply. When the clock starts running is a fact question in every file, so we look at it on the first call rather than guess.

Jon C. Boesen on Suing Your Own Insurer

Jon C. Boesen, the firm’s founder and a civil litigator for 36 years, tells clients who call about their own carrier:

“The people who call me about their own insurance company are usually more hurt by the betrayal than by the money. They paid premiums for years, and the first time they needed the coverage, they got a form letter. What wins these cases is not how angry the client is. It is the paper trail: the dates, the repeated requests for records the company already had, and a doctor or counselor who wrote down that the client could not sleep. When I can put the insurer’s own claim notes next to that timeline, the jury sees the delay the way my client lived it.”

If the carrier that delayed your claim was your own, bring every letter you have to the first meeting, even the ones you think do not matter.

What Cases Like Yours Have Recovered

The emotional side of an injury is part of what a claim is worth, and two results show how that plays out:

• $1,025,000. Our client was rear-ended in a four-car crash, was hospitalized with prior spinal injuries and signs of a concussion, and began therapy for depression and anxiety after the accident. The settlement lets the client focus on physical and emotional recovery.
• $475,000. A client rear-ended by an FBI vehicle had prior spinal problems worsen to the point of needing spinal surgery. Despite an initial refusal to cover the physical injuries, Boesen Law secured $475,000.

More outcomes are on our case results page, and we are glad to talk through how yours compares.

Contact Boesen Law About Your Insurance Dispute

An insurer that stalls is betting you will give up or take less. We are a boutique firm with big results, and we have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for injured Coloradans, so we know how these files look from the inside. Contact Boesen Law for a free, in-person consultation. We answer calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, we speak English, Spanish, and Russian, and you owe nothing unless we recover money for you.

FAQs About Suing Your Insurance Company for Emotional Distress

What proof do you need to sue for emotional distress?

You need evidence that the insurer acted unreasonably and evidence that its conduct caused real distress. In Goodson, the Colorado Supreme Court left it to the jury to weigh whether the distress was real, and in practice the strongest claims pair the insurer’s letters and claim notes with treatment records, witness accounts, and financial records showing what the delay set off. The case is decided on whether it is more likely than not that the insurer’s conduct caused your distress.

Can you sue an insurance company for mental stress?

Yes, if it is your own insurer and it acted in bad faith. Mental stress, anxiety, and humiliation are recoverable in a Colorado common-law bad faith claim. If the stress came from the other driver’s insurer, the usual path is a claim against the at-fault driver, where your own emotional suffering from the crash is part of the damages.

What are the requirements for suing for emotional distress in Colorado?

For a bad faith claim against your insurer, you generally need a valid claim under your own policy, conduct by the insurer that was unreasonable, proof that the insurer knew it was unreasonable or recklessly ignored that fact, and harm caused by that conduct. The separate statutory claim under § 10-3-1116 has a lower bar, an unreasonable delay or denial without a reasonable basis, but it pays double the covered benefit rather than emotional distress damages.

Is it worth suing for emotional distress?

It depends on how long the delay lasted, what it cost you, and how well it is documented. Many cases settle once an insurer sees that its own file will be read to a jury, and the possibility of fee shifting under § 10-3-1116 changes the math for the carrier. Before you accept a reduced payout, it helps to know how to respond to a low settlement offer so you do not give up a claim you did not know you had.

Call (303) 999-9999 or complete a Free Case Evaluation form