The rule, and its unusually broad reach
Under C.R.S. § 13-80-108, Colorado's discovery rule starts the clock on the date an injury and its cause are discovered, or reasonably should have been discovered, rather than automatically on the date of the underlying incident. What's genuinely notable about Colorado's version is how explicitly it's written to cover specific categories of claims — including, directly, motor vehicle accidents under subsection (12) of the same statute. This matters because in many other states, discovery rules are framed narrowly around latent or hard-to-detect injuries; Colorado applies the same discovery-based approach even to car accidents, where the injury is often obvious immediately but the full extent may not be.
Minors: the clock waits for adulthood
Colorado tolls — pauses — its statute of limitations for anyone injured as a minor, until they turn 18. In practical terms, this means the clock doesn't meaningfully start running until the 18th birthday, giving a young injury victim the full statutory period from that point forward rather than one that could otherwise expire while they were still a minor.
Medical malpractice: discovery rule, with a hard outer limit
Medical malpractice claims benefit from the same discovery-based approach for the ordinary two-year period, but Colorado pairs it with a separate statute of repose: an outer limit of three years from the date of the malpractice itself, regardless of when the injury was actually discovered. In most circumstances, this repose period can bar a claim that genuinely wasn't discoverable within three years, with certain statutory exceptions that are worth reviewing directly with an attorney given how consequential this particular limit can be.
What doesn't pause the clock
A genuinely common and costly misunderstanding: actively negotiating a settlement with an insurance company does not toll or pause Colorado's filing deadline, whether the applicable period is two years, three years, or something else entirely. The clock keeps running the entire time talks are ongoing.