Chapter 13 - § 13.8 • STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS

• Jurisdiction: Colorado

§ 13.8 • STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS

The statute of limitations for defamation claims in Colorado is one year. C.R.S. § 13-80-103 provides in pertinent part:

The following civil actions, regardless of the theory upon which suit is brought, or against whom suit is brought, shall be commenced within one year after the cause of action accrues, and not thereafter:
(a) The following tort actions: Assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, libel, and slander; . . . .

C.R.S. § 13-80-103(1)(a). Under C.R.C.P. 6(e), the proper method for computing a period of years for purposes of a statute of limitations excludes the day of the event from which the period begins to run and includes the last day of the period. Cade v. Regensberger, 804 P.2d 238 (Colo. App. 1990) (dealing with the two-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions). The rule that actions for slander and libel must be commenced within one year after the cause of action accrues or they are barred has been applied by the Colorado courts for more than a century. See Bush v. McMann, 55 P. 956, 957 (Colo. App. 1899). This rule is embraced in the pattern jury instructions. See CJI-Civ. 22:23 (CLE ed. 2016).

Under Colorado law, a cause of action for injury to person, property, reputation, possession, relationship, or status shall be considered to accrue on the date both the injury and its cause are known or should have been known by exercise of reasonable diligence. C.R.S. § 13-80-108(1). A claim for relief for slander accrues on the date the oral statement was first made, and a claim for relief for libel accrues on the date of the first publication. Spears Free Clinic & Hosp. for Poor Children v. Maier, 261 P.2d 489 (Colo. 1953); Russell v. McMillen, 685 P.2d 255 (Colo. App. 1984). A single communication, heard at the same time by two or more third persons, constitutes a single publication. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 577A(2). Thus, any one edition of a book or newspaper, any one radio or television broadcast, or any single exhibition of a motion picture or similar aggregate communication is a single publication. Id.

In addition, each publication of a libel or slander is a separate claim for relief and must be pleaded separately. Corporon v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 708 P.2d 1385, 1390 (Colo. App. 1985); Spears Free Clinic, 261 P.2d at 491; Lininger, 226 P.2d at 812. Where the plaintiff alleges a continuous publication, the claim accrues on the date that the publication was first put into...