Chapter 8 - CHAPTER 8 CLAIMS AGAINST A GOVERNMENTAL ENTITY

• Jurisdiction: Colorado

Chapter 8 CLAIMS AGAINST A GOVERNMENTAL ENTITY

New homes frequently suffer damage traceable to the acts and omissions of a governmental entity. Landslides, subsidence, flooding, and wildfires due to government entity road excavation, water and sewer line construction and maintenance, rock blasting, damming of rivers and streams, controlled burns, and similar actions may damage homes. Finding a basis upon which to successfully sue a responsible governmental entity or official is difficult.

Though the origin of sovereign immunity is obscure, the doctrine, as we know it, developed in England and was based upon the historical fiction that the king could do no wrong and was thus free from legal accountability.¹ The doctrine of sovereign immunity became deeply embedded in the English common law and, subsequently, through judicial recognition and reiteration, became a familiar axiom in American jurisprudence.² The Colorado Supreme Court prospectively abrogated the doctrine of sovereign immunity in 1971.³

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Notes:

^[1] Bertrand v. Bd. of Cty. Comm'rs, 872 P.2d 223, 225 (Colo. 1994) (citing Edwin M. Borchard, "Governmental Responsibility in Tort," 36 Yale L. J. 1 (1926)).

^[2] See Bertrand, 872 P.2d at 224-25 (citing Kawananakoa v....