Here’s the part most people miss. When you file a claim against the driver who hit you, that driver’s insurance company pays. Your insurer stays out of it. But when that driver has no insurance, your uninsured motorist claim flips the whole setup, now your insurance company is the one writing the check.
That single shift changes their entire motivation.
Think about it this way. For years, your insurer collected your premiums, processed your renewals, and everything felt smooth. Then you get rear-ended at the I-25 and Arapahoe Road interchange by someone carrying zero coverage. You turn to your own policy for help, and suddenly the company you’ve paid for a decade starts acting like the other side.
“I have people tell me all the time, ‘I’ve been dealing with this insurance company for 20 years and they’ve always treated me great.’ And I say, ‘Have you ever made a claim?’ and they say, ‘no.’ Well, ok, so the person who has been taking your money has been treating you great. Not surprising. Wait till you go to the claims department.”, Jason Jordan, Founding Partner
We see this play out constantly with Greenwood Village clients. Someone files a uninsured motorist claim expecting cooperation. Instead they get delays, low offers, and adjusters questioning whether their injuries are real. It catches people off guard every time, and it shouldn’t, because it’s not an accident.
The reason is pure math. Every dollar your insurer pays on your uninsured motorist claim comes directly from their bottom line. No other carrier to split costs with. No subrogation to recover funds later. They’re it. So they treat your claim the same way a defendant’s insurer would, looking for every reason to reduce what they owe.
Your policy language matters here. Colorado requires insurers to offer uninsured motorist coverage, and roughly 15% of drivers in the state carry no insurance at all according to the Insurance Research Council. That means UM claims aren’t rare. But your insurer still has a real financial interest in paying as little as possible on each one.
The adjuster’s job description changed. When you were just a policyholder paying premiums, customer service mattered. Now that you’re a claimant, loss mitigation matters. Same company. Different department. Completely different goals.
They’ll use your own statements against you. Recorded statements you gave thinking you were cooperating get reviewed for anything they can use. Medical records get sent to their own doctors for “independent” review. And Colorado’s modified comparative negligence rule under C.R.S. § 13-21-111 gives them a tool to argue you were partly at fault, reducing your payout, or wiping it out entirely if they push your share of fault to 50% or more.
Insurance companies count on you not knowing this. They count on you assuming good faith because you’ve been a loyal customer. Loyalty doesn’t factor into claims decisions, though. That’s just not how the claims department works.
If you’re dealing with this right now, our Uninsured Motorist Accident Lawyer page walks through how we handle these cases and what your options look like under Colorado law. Read it before your next conversation with your adjuster.
Common Tactics Insurers Use to Dispute or Delay UM Claims
Insurance companies have playbooks for fighting uninsured motorist claims. Not loose guidelines, actual step-by-step strategies designed to pay you less or nothing at all. We’ve seen every one of these tactics used against Greenwood Village clients, sometimes all at once on the same claim.
Here’s what you’re likely to run into.
Questioning the Severity of Your Injuries
This is the most common move. Your insurer will request every medical record they can pull. Then they’ll comb through years of your history looking for anything they can use, a chiropractic visit from 2019, a note about back pain from a routine checkup. They’ll argue your injuries existed before the crash. That the uninsured driver didn’t actually cause what you’re claiming.
They may also send you to an “independent” medical exam. The doctor works for the insurance company on a regular basis. That doctor’s job is to minimize your injuries on paper, and the reports almost always do exactly that. We’ve seen this play out hundreds of times. The findings rarely match what your own treating physician documented.
Dragging Out the Timeline
Delay is a weapon. Your insurer knows you have bills piling up. They know you might be out of work. So they slow everything down, requesting documents you already sent, “losing” paperwork, assigning a new adjuster mid-claim so you have to start over explaining everything from scratch.
The goal is simple. They want you frustrated enough to accept a low offer just to make it stop.
And it works on a lot of people.
Using Comparative Fault Against You
Colorado’s modified comparative negligence law under C.R.S. § 13-21-111 gives insurers a powerful tool. If they can argue you were 50% or more at fault, your recovery drops to zero. So they’ll look for anything, you didn’t brake fast enough, you were changing lanes, your headlights were off at dusk near the Arapahoe Road interchange. (The I-25 corridor through Greenwood Village is one of the spots we hear about most. The lighting at some of those on-ramps is genuinely bad after dark, and insurers know it.)
Even when the other driver had no insurance and ran a red light, your own insurer will still try to shift blame onto you. That’s how they reduce what they owe.
Disputing That the Other Driver Was Actually Uninsured
Sometimes your insurer will challenge whether the at-fault driver truly lacked coverage. They’ll claim the other driver might have had a policy somewhere, or that another source of recovery exists. This lets them stall your uninsured motorist claim while they “investigate.” The investigation can drag on for months.
Lowball First Offers
If your insurer does make an offer, expect it to be low. We had a Greenwood Village client with $87,000 in medical bills who received an initial offer that wouldn’t have covered half of them. That’s not an outlier, it’s standard practice. They’re testing you. They want to see if you’ll take it because you’re worn down.
But here’s what changes the math. Under C.R.S. § 10-3-1116, if your insurer unreasonably denies or delays your claim, you can pursue bad faith damages, double the covered benefit plus attorney fees. Insurance companies know which firms actually file bad faith claims. That knowledge alone changes how they handle your file.
If any of these tactics sound familiar, you don’t have to keep fighting this alone. Our Uninsured Motorist Accident Lawyer team at Jordan Law handles these situations from our office right here in Greenwood Village.
For a free legal consultation, call (303) 465-8733
Colorado Law Gives You Real Rights Against Unreasonable UM Denials
Most people in Greenwood Village don’t know this. Colorado has one of the strongest bad faith insurance laws in the country. Not a suggestion that your insurer play fair, a statute with real consequences.
C.R.S. § 10-3-1116 says it plainly. If an insurance company unreasonably delays or denies a claim, you can recover double the covered benefit plus your attorney fees. Read that again. Double. And they pay your lawyer’s bill on top of it.
We’ve seen this change the math fast. An insurer lowballs a UM claim or drags it out for months hoping you’ll give up. But when they know a bad faith claim is on the table, that “final offer” suddenly has room to grow.
What Counts as Unreasonable Under Colorado Law
Not every denial triggers bad faith. The insurer has to act unreasonably. But Colorado courts have made clear that the bar isn’t as high as insurers want you to think. Ignoring medical records you submitted counts. Refusing to explain a denial counts. Dragging out an investigation for months with no real justification counts.
A pattern we see from clients near the DTC corridor goes like this. Someone gets rear-ended on I-25 near Arapahoe Road by a driver with no insurance. They file a UM claim. The insurer acknowledges the crash but then sits on the file for four months, asking for the same documents twice, requesting another recorded statement, sending you to yet another medical exam. That pattern of delay can cross the line into bad faith, and we’ve built cases around exactly that kind of conduct.
Colorado’s modified comparative negligence rule under C.R.S. § 13-21-111 matters here too. Your insurer might argue you were partly at fault to reduce what they owe, pointing to things like failure to brake or not wearing a seatbelt. But if you’re less than 50% at fault, you still recover. Insurers sometimes inflate your fault percentage knowing you won’t push back. When the evidence doesn’t support that number, the tactic itself can feed a bad faith argument.
Time Limits You Can’t Ignore
Colorado gives you three years to file a motor vehicle accident claim under C.R.S. § 13-80-101. That clock starts on the date of the crash. Miss it and your UM claim is gone.
But there’s a trap inside that deadline. Your policy might have its own shorter notice requirements. Most people don’t realize this until it’s too late. Some policies require you to notify the insurer within 30 or 60 days, miss that internal deadline and your insurer has an excuse to deny everything regardless of how strong your case is.
If your UM claim involves a government vehicle, an RTD bus, a CDOT truck, a City of Greenwood Village fleet vehicle, the timeline gets tighter. The Colorado Governmental Immunity Act requires written notice within 182 days under C.R.S. § 24-10-109. That’s roughly six months. Not six months to think about it. Six months to file proper written notice with the correct entity, or you lose the right to pursue that claim entirely.
Colorado law protects you from an insurer that plays games with your uninsured motorist claim. But those protections only work if you use them before the deadlines run out. If your own insurance company is fighting your UM claim right now, talking to an uninsured motorist accident lawyer isn’t something to put off, it’s how you turn the pressure around.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my own insurance company act like the enemy when I file a UM claim in Greenwood Village?
Your insurer acts like the opposing side because they are now the one paying the bill. When you file an uninsured motorist claim, there is no other carrier to share the cost. Every dollar they pay comes straight from their bottom line. That changes how their claims department treats you. You go from being a valued customer to being a financial liability. It happens to Greenwood Village drivers all the time, and it surprises people every single time.
Can my insurer really use my own recorded statement against me in a UM claim?
Yes, they absolutely can. Anything you say in a recorded statement gets reviewed for details that reduce your payout. You might say something innocent, like you did not see the other car right away. Your insurer can use that to argue you were partly at fault. Under Colorado’s modified comparative negligence law, if they push your fault share to 50% or more, you recover nothing. Think carefully before giving any recorded statement without legal guidance first.
What is an “independent” medical exam, and should I be worried about it?
An independent medical exam, or IME, is not truly independent. The doctor is hired and paid by your insurance company on a regular basis. Their job is to review your injuries and write a report. Those reports almost always minimize what your own treating doctor found. Your insurer uses that report to argue your injuries are less serious than you claim. It is one of the most common tactics used against uninsured motorist claimants in Greenwood Village and across Colorado.
Does the I-25 and Arapahoe Road area in Greenwood Village affect how insurers argue fault in UM claims?
It can, and we see it come up often. The on-ramps along the I-25 corridor near Arapahoe Road have lighting conditions that get genuinely poor after dark. Insurers know this. They will argue that you should have seen the other driver sooner, or that your speed or lane position contributed to the crash. Even when the uninsured driver clearly caused the accident, your insurer looks for anything in that environment to shift some blame onto you and lower your payout.
How common is it to get hit by an uninsured driver in Colorado?
It is more common than most people expect. According to the Insurance Research Council, roughly 15% of Colorado drivers carry no insurance at all. That means about one in seven drivers on roads like Arapahoe Road or the I-25 corridor through Greenwood Village has zero coverage. Uninsured motorist claims are not rare events. That is exactly why understanding how your own insurer handles these claims matters before you ever need to file one. Our Uninsured Motorist Accident Lawyer page explains what your options look like under Colorado law.
Is it a mistake to assume my insurer will handle my UM claim in good faith just because I’ve been a loyal customer?
Yes, that assumption catches a lot of people off guard. The department that collected your premiums for years is not the same department that handles your claim. Customer service and claims are completely different operations with different goals. One wants to keep you happy. The other wants to pay as little as possible. Loyalty to your insurer does not translate into favorable treatment when money is on the table. Knowing this going in puts you in a much stronger position.