You have probably been told when the criminal hearing is, and you may already have worked out that it will not pay for any of this. A conviction punishes the driver. It does not replace the wages you are losing, and restitution rarely comes close to the real cost of a serious injury. The case that answers for what this has actually done to you is a separate one, and it belongs to you rather than to the district attorney. Our Westminster car accident lawyers bring that case.
Your civil claim can move at its own pace, and it can reach people the prosecution never touches, including the business that kept serving a visibly drunk customer. Our experience is the difference that gets results, and impaired-driving files are where that shows most clearly. The first conversation is a free, in-person consultation, and you owe no attorney fee unless we recover compensation for you.
Reach out to our law firm for a no-cost, no-obligation consultation today. Call our personal injury lawyers in the state of Colorado at (303) 999-9999 or contact us online.
Where a Westminster Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer Starts Your Case
An impaired-driving crash generates two files at once, a criminal investigation and your civil claim, and the first one is full of material the second one needs. Getting that material early, and in a usable form, is most of the work.
- Secure the whole investigation file. We request the arrest report, body-worn camera footage, roadside maneuvers, and the breath or blood chemistry, then obtain the official crash record so the version of events on paper is complete rather than partial.
- Trace the drinking backwards from the crash. Card receipts, tabs, rideshare pickups, and social posts let us reconstruct where the driver was in the hours beforehand, which is what turns a suspicion about a bar into a provable claim.
- Pull the venue’s own evidence quickly. Interior camera footage and point-of-sale records show how much was served and how the customer was behaving, and most venues overwrite that footage within weeks.
- Track the prosecution without waiting on it. We follow the criminal case, protect any restitution you are entitled to, and use a plea or conviction as proof of fault, while your civil claim keeps moving on its own schedule.
- Document the aftermath, not just the injuries. The medical file matters, and so does the record of what you can no longer do, because that is what an exemplary damages argument is built from.
- Deal with the insurers so you do not have to. We take over every adjuster contact and prepare the file as though it is going to trial, which is the only thing that reliably changes a carrier’s opening number.
Boesen Law has handled impaired-driving claims across Adams and Jefferson counties for decades. Our attorneys are reachable around the clock, seven days a week, and we are happy to talk you through what claims that began the way yours did have gone on to recover.
Where and When Impaired Crashes Happen in Westminster
Impaired driving is not spread evenly across a map or a week. It concentrates, and knowing where it concentrates tells us which cameras to ask for and which businesses to look at before anything is deleted.
Late-night crashes on the arterial roads
The worst of these arrive after closing time, when traffic is thin enough for speed to climb and a driver who has lost their judgment has nothing to slow them down. Wrong-way entries, drifting across a center line, and running straight through a signal are the recurring patterns along 104th Avenue and on Lowell Boulevard. Witnesses are scarce at that hour, which puts almost all of the weight on physical evidence and on whatever cameras happen to face the road.
Crashes that start at a venue
The other cluster starts somewhere specific. A driver leaves a restaurant, a bar, or an event near the Westminster Promenade after being served well past the point of visible intoxication, and the crash follows within a few miles. These are the files where a second defendant exists, and where the evidence that proves it sits on a hard drive that gets overwritten on a schedule.
The state numbers show why this keeps happening. The Colorado Department of Transportation’s impaired driving figures record 715 traffic deaths in 2025, of which 236 involved impaired driving, a rise of nearly ten percent over the previous year. If an impaired driver hurt you in Westminster, suing the drunk driver starts with preserving the proof of where the drinking happened.
What Colorado Law Lets You Recover After a DUI Crash
Your claim and the prosecution answer different questions. The state asks whether the driver committed a crime and what the punishment should be. Your claim asks what the crash cost you and who should pay for it, and it does not depend on the criminal case succeeding. A conviction helps, sometimes a great deal, but an acquittal or a dismissed charge does not end your case, because the civil standard of proof is lower than the criminal one.
Driving while impaired is also the textbook example of conduct that opens the door to exemplary damages under C.R.S. § 13-21-102. These are not automatic and they are not available for an ordinary mistake behind the wheel. They exist for the decisions a person makes knowing full well what could follow, which is exactly what getting into a car impaired is.
When a bar or restaurant shares the blame
Colorado’s dram shop statute, C.R.S. § 44-3-801, allows a claim against a licensed establishment that willfully and knowingly served alcohol to a person who was visibly intoxicated, or to anyone under twenty-one. It is a narrow provision and it is deliberately hard to satisfy, which is why so many of these claims are never brought at all. It is also the difference between a thin policy and a real recovery when the driver turns out to have minimum limits.
Two things make or break a dram shop claim, and both are about speed. The proof lives in service records and camera footage that a venue has no obligation to keep. And the deadline is much shorter than people expect, because a dram shop action must be brought within one year of the sale rather than within the three years that apply to the crash itself. If alcohol was served to the driver who hit you, tell us early and we will look at it with you in a free consultation.
Injuries Caused by Drunk Driving Crashes in Westminster
Impairment removes the reaction that would otherwise take energy out of a collision. Nobody brakes, nobody steers away, and the crash happens at whatever speed the driver was already carrying. That is why these files so often involve injuries that reshape a life rather than interrupt it for a few weeks.
- Traumatic brain injuries, ranging from a concussion with lasting cognitive effects to severe damage that changes memory, mood, and the capacity to work.
- Spinal cord and back trauma, including disc herniation, nerve damage, and in the worst cases permanent loss of function.
- Orthopedic injuries to the pelvis, hips, legs, and ribs, frequently requiring surgical fixation and long rehabilitation.
- Internal bleeding and organ damage from belt loading and intrusion, which is why emergency imaging matters even when someone feels able to walk away.
- Catastrophic injuries that bring lifelong care needs and rebuild a family’s finances around them.
- Wrongful death, where a wholly avoidable decision takes a life and leaves the people behind to carry it.
- Psychological injury, including post-traumatic stress and a fear of driving that outlasts the physical recovery by years.
Getting these documented and tied to the crash early is what stops an insurer from recasting them later as something you already had. Our team works with your treating physicians and, where the injuries call for it, with outside specialists who can speak to what the next twenty years look like.
Compensation Available After a Drunk Driving Crash in Westminster
An impaired-driving claim usually reaches further than an ordinary collision claim, because the conduct itself unlocks a category of damages a simple mistake never would. Each of these has to be built separately and proven on its own terms.
- Economic damages. Emergency and hospital care, surgery, rehabilitation, medication, assistive equipment, projected future treatment, lost income, and any permanent reduction in earning capacity, each supported by records and, where the future is at stake, by expert projection.
- Non-economic damages. Physical pain, disrupted sleep, the loss of activities and relationships that made ordinary life feel ordinary, and the particular anger of having been hurt by something so easily avoided. Non-economic damages are capped in Colorado, with a second, higher tier that opens once serious physical impairment is proven to a clear and convincing standard.
- Exemplary damages. Available where the conduct was willful and wanton, which impaired driving frequently is, and the reason punitive damages in DUI car accidents are pursued separately from the compensatory side of the claim.
- Dram shop recovery. Where a licensed venue overserved the driver, a statutory claim against that business can add a source of payment the driver’s own policy could never provide.
- Losses to the household. The care, driving, childcare, and daily work someone else has picked up because you cannot do it right now.
Boesen Law’s record across Colorado runs to hundreds of millions of dollars recovered, and a good part of that comes from building the exemplary damages case properly instead of treating it as an afterthought. A free consultation is the place to work out which of these your own case supports.
Do You Have a Westminster Drunk Driving Claim?
Jason Carr, whose fourteen years as a commissioned officer in the Army Reserve Military Police still shape the way he runs an investigation, notes:
“The mistake I see most often is waiting for the criminal case to finish. People assume they need a conviction in hand before anything can happen, and by the time it arrives the bar has recorded over its footage and the receipts are gone. I start on the opposite end. Where was this driver drinking, who kept pouring, and what did the staff see. The driver’s insurance is frequently the smallest number in the file, and the businesses and policies standing behind them are where a real recovery comes from. Waiting politely for the district attorney is how that money quietly disappears.”
The coverage picture here is usually layered, and worth mapping properly before anyone signs anything. Beyond the driver’s liability limits there may be a dram shop defendant, an employer if the driver was working, a vehicle owner, and your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, which matters enormously given how often impaired drivers carry the legal minimum and nothing more.
What Cases Like Yours Have Recovered
Boesen Law’s work against egregious drivers includes a $770,000 settlement for a client struck by a reckless driver who ran a stop sign, whose injuries required costly treatment and several surgeries, and a $390,000 recovery for a client struck by a car that ran a stop sign while they were crossing the street, leaving a severe concussion and lasting body pain. Our full case results show the range these claims can reach.
If a drunk driver hurt you or someone in your family in Westminster, we will listen properly and tell you honestly what your claim looks like.
Contact a Westminster Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer at Boesen Law
There is a particular kind of anger that comes with an injury nobody had to suffer, and it does not fade quickly when the criminal case moves at its own slow pace and the bills keep arriving on time. You are entitled to a process that answers for what this cost you, not only one that punishes the person who caused it.
When you are ready, contact Boesen Law for a free, in-person consultation and we will take the weight of it from there. Westminster claims are filed in the Adams County District Court at the justice center in Brighton, and we handle that end. We are a boutique firm with big results, our attorneys are reachable around the clock, seven days a week, our staff work with clients in English, Russian, and Spanish, and you owe no attorney fee unless we recover compensation for you.
FAQs About Westminster Drunk Driving Accidents
The driver had been drinking at a bar before the crash. Does that add anyone to my claim?
It can, and it is worth checking straight away. Colorado’s dram shop law allows a claim against a licensed establishment that willfully and knowingly served someone who was already visibly intoxicated, or served anyone under twenty-one. The standard is demanding on purpose, so it turns on evidence rather than assumption: point-of-sale records showing how much was served, interior camera footage showing how the person was behaving, and staff accounts. That evidence has a short life, and a dram shop claim carries a one-year deadline rather than the three years that apply to the crash, so this is the part of a case that cannot wait.
If the criminal case drags on for a year, am I running out of time on my own claim?
Your claim against the driver is not on the criminal court’s clock. C.R.S. § 13-80-101 sets a three-year window for most motor vehicle injury claims, and it opens on the date of the crash rather than the date a prosecution ends, so a slow criminal case eats into your time without extending it. Knowing the filing deadlines for a personal injury case matters less here than a second risk almost nobody sees coming. A dram shop claim expires after a year, venue footage is gone in weeks, and witnesses become harder to find every month. Waiting for a verdict before calling a lawyer is how people lose the strongest parts of their case while the deadline that worried them is still comfortably far off.
The court ordered restitution. Is that the same as compensation?
No, and the gap between them surprises almost everyone. Restitution is part of the criminal sentence, it is usually limited to documented out-of-pocket losses, and it is collected from a person who often has almost nothing to collect from. It does not answer for pain, it rarely reaches future care, and no insurance company pays it. A civil claim reaches all of that, and it reaches the policies and businesses behind the driver. Accepting restitution does not close your civil claim, though what you receive is generally accounted for so nothing is paid twice.
Can I still recover if the driver was never convicted?
Yes. A criminal case has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, while your civil claim has to show what more likely than not happened, and cases fail on procedural grounds that have nothing to do with whether the driver was impaired. We build the impairment proof ourselves out of the chemistry, the officer’s observations, the body camera footage, and the driver’s own movements that evening. A conviction is useful evidence when it exists. It has never been the entry ticket.
The drunk driver had almost no insurance. What happens now?
This is common, and it is not the end of the claim. Your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage is written for exactly this, medical payments coverage can start paying treatment costs before anyone has settled the question of fault, and a dram shop defendant or an employer may add a policy the driver never had. Dealing with an underinsured at-fault driver usually means reading every policy in your household, which is one of the first things we do rather than one of the last.
Reach out to our law firm for a no-cost, no-obligation consultation today. Call our personal injury lawyers in the state of Colorado at (303) 999-9999 or contact us online.
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