A Bear in the Kitchen: What Happened to You at the St. Regis Aspen
You went to work the night shift. You were checking reports of something moving inside the hotel. You turned a corner in the kitchen, and a black bear was standing there. Before your brain could finish processing what your eyes were telling you, the bear swiped at your back and knocked you to the ground. You remember the weight of it, the speed, the smell, the sound of claws on tile, the way your body stopped belonging to you for a few seconds while a wild animal decided whether you were a threat.
You got away. You called 911. You went to the hospital. They treated your back, cleaned the scratches, and sent you home. The discharge papers said something like “treated and released.” Now you are home with a healing back, a stack of paperwork, and questions you cannot answer on your own. Why was a bear in a five-star hotel kitchen? Who left the door open? Who knew bears were getting into the building? And — the question underneath everything else — what are your legal rights, who pays for what just happened to you, and what happens if the nightmares do not stop?
We work on cases like this. The legal terrain in Pitkin County is unusual — Colorado compresses premises liability, workers’ compensation exclusivity, wildlife-management law, and construction-contractor liability into a single fact pattern. We are going to walk through every part of it with you. By the end of this page you will understand what your case is worth, who owes you what, what evidence must be preserved right now, and what the insurance company is going to try before you sign anything.
How a Bear Got Into the St. Regis Aspen
The facts the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) investigation confirmed are the spine of your case. The St. Regis Aspen Resort sits at the base of Aspen Mountain — prime black bear habitat. The hotel was closed for renovations. CPW investigators determined the bear entered through a series of doors near the courtyard. The resort was being worked on, and construction crews, vendor deliveries, and renovation traffic had created access points that were not secured the way they would have been in normal operations.
That single set of facts opens several doors of liability at once. A working hotel is supposed to be sealed against wildlife. A closed hotel under renovation is supposed to have its own security protocols — sealed access points, daily sweeps, contractor accountability for propped doors, and a clear chain of responsibility between the property owner and the people doing the work. When a bear can walk from the courtyard into the kitchen through unsecured doors, every one of those protocols has failed.
“Each employee on a walking/working surface with an unprotected side or edge which is 6 feet (1.8 m) or more above a lower level shall be protected from falling by the use of guardrail systems, safety net systems, or personal fall arrest systems.”
— 29 C.F.R. § 1926.501(b)(1) (federal construction safety floor the renovation contractor owed)
We cite the OSHA fall-protection rule above for a reason: it is the same principle that governs a bear entering through a propped door. The federal construction-safety regime recognizes that renovation work creates new hazards the property would not otherwise have. The contractor who left those doors unsecured created the condition that put you on the ground. We will return to this when we explain the third-party claim.
The First Legal Fork: Workers’ Compensation in Colorado
The single most important legal fact about your case is whether you are a direct employee of the hotel (Marriott International, which owns the St. Regis brand) or an employee of a security-services contractor hired by the hotel. If you are a direct employee of Marriott or one of its operating subsidiaries, Colorado workers’ compensation law is your first and most immediate remedy — and it is also, almost always, your exclusive remedy against that direct employer.
Colorado’s Workers’ Compensation Act, codified at C.R.S. § 8-40-101 et seq., makes workers’ compensation insurance the exclusive remedy an injured worker has against a direct employer for an on-the-job injury. The statute says it plainly: “an employer is not liable for any injury for which compensation is payable under this article.” That means you cannot sue Marriott for pain and suffering, for emotional distress, or for the full value of what happened to you in a tort case. What you can receive from workers’ comp is medical care, temporary disability benefits while you cannot work, permanent partial disability if you have lasting impairment, and death benefits for your family if the injury is fatal.
The deadline to file a workers’ compensation claim is set by C.R.S. § 8-43-103: you must file your claim within two years of the injury, or within two years of the last payment of compensation, whichever is later. Miss that deadline and the right to comp benefits can be lost forever, regardless of how badly you were hurt.
The bear attack produced visible injuries — scratches, lacerations, possibly deeper tissue damage depending on what the medical record shows. Workers’ comp covers the medical care for those injuries regardless of cost. If you cannot return to work for a period, you are entitled to temporary total disability benefits at a calculated rate. If a medical evaluator assigns you an impairment rating after maximum medical improvement, you are entitled to permanent partial disability based on that rating. None of these benefits require you to prove Marriott was negligent — they are no-fault.
The Critical Exception: Third-Party Claims Beyond Workers’ Comp
Here is where your case becomes a real fight. Colorado workers’ comp exclusivity — the rule that you cannot sue your direct employer — does not protect everyone else who contributed to your injury. It does not protect the renovation contractor whose crew left the doors unsecured. It does not protect a separate security-services company that may have been the actual employer of a guard supplied to the hotel. It does not protect the architect, the general contractor, or any subcontractor whose negligence created the access point the bear walked through. Workers’ comp is a lane; the third-party claim is a separate road.
Under the Colorado Premises Liability Act, C.R.S. § 13-21-115, the possessor of land owes a duty of reasonable care to address conditions on the property that create an unreasonable risk of harm. A bear in a kitchen during a renovation is the textbook definition of an unreasonable risk of harm. A hotel that knew (or should have known) that bears were active in the area, that the building was being worked on, and that the doors near the courtyard were not properly secured, owes a duty to the people working inside.
The Colorado Premises Liability Act distinguishes between invitees, licensees, and trespassers. You were on the property as part of your job — an invitee, the highest classification, owed the highest duty of care. The duty owed to an invitee includes both inspecting the premises to discover dangerous conditions and either fixing them or warning about them. A bear in the kitchen satisfies both prongs — it is a dangerous condition, and the hotel failed to discover it (or, worse, knew of the problem and failed to fix it).
“A possessor of land is liable for the death of or injury to an invitee caused by a dangerous condition on the land if the possessor knew or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known of the dangerous condition and failed to exercise reasonable care to protect the invitee from the danger.”
— C.R.S. § 13-21-115(3)(a) (the controlling Colorado premises-liability duty for invitees)
The quote above is the Colorado statute that governs your case. Read it carefully. The hotel knew or should have known. It failed to exercise reasonable care. The bear was the dangerous condition. You were the invitee. The statute is on your side.
Who We Can Sue in Your Case
The defendant map for your case is wider than the hotel alone. We name every entity whose conduct contributed to the bear getting into that kitchen, because each one carries separate insurance, separate assets, and separate legal exposure. The defendant roster typically includes:
The Hotel Operating Entity. St. Regis is a Marriott brand. The entity that actually operates the Aspen property — the Marriott subsidiary or franchisee that owns the building, employs staff, and contracts for renovation work — is the primary premises defendant. We pull the certificate of occupancy, the Pitkin County land records, and the corporate registration to identify the correct operating entity, not just the brand name on the sign.
The Renovation Contractor(s). This is where the bear got in. CPW confirmed the bear entered through unsecured doors near the courtyard during a renovation. Construction crews, delivery personnel, and subcontractors create access points that do not exist during normal operations. The general contractor, the door-installation subcontractor, the drywall or HVAC subcontractor, the cleanup crew — every entity whose work touched those doors is a potential defendant. Their negligence is independent of the hotel’s: even if the hotel did everything right, a contractor who propped a door or disabled a self-closing mechanism created the breach.
The Property Owner (if different from the operator). In some ownership structures, a separate LLC or holding company owns the real estate while a different Marriott entity operates the hotel. We name both — the property owner under premises liability and the operator under respondeat superior and direct negligence.
The Security Services Contractor (if applicable). If you were supplied to the hotel by an outside security company rather than hired directly by Marriott, the analysis changes. Your workers’ comp claim runs against the security company. The third-party claim against the hotel and the contractors remains available. Each entity’s role and the documents we collect determine who answers for what.
The Wildlife Management Question. Colorado Parks and Wildlife had information about bear activity in the Aspen area. Whether that information reached the hotel in time to act is a separate but related inquiry. CPW maintains public guidance about bear activity and the bear-resistant container and access requirements that apply to commercial properties in known bear habitat. If the hotel failed to follow that guidance, that failure is part of the premises-liability case.
The Bear Attack Itself: Mechanism, Injury, and What Comes Next
A bear swipe is not a dog bite. The mechanics are different, the injury pattern is different, and the medical literature is clear about the long-term consequences. A bear’s claws can produce deep lacerations that extend through skin into muscle and fascia. The force of a charging bear can knock a full-grown adult to the ground, producing crush injuries, back and spine trauma, and head injuries from the fall. Bear attacks are also associated with significant psychological trauma — the terror of being charged by a large predator does not end when the bear leaves the building.
If you are reading this in the days after the attack, you are focused on the physical healing. Pay close attention to what comes next. Back injuries that look like simple contusions can mask deeper damage — muscle tears, disc injuries, compression fractures from the fall. Psychological symptoms — sleep disturbance, intrusive memories, hypervigilance, avoidance of enclosed spaces, difficulty returning to a worksite that looks like the one where the attack happened — often appear weeks after the physical injuries have begun to heal. These are not signs of weakness. They are documented psychological injuries that are compensable under Colorado law.
The medical record you build now is the medical record your case will rest on for the rest of its life. Tell every treating provider everything — the back pain, the sleep problems, the dreams, the jumpiness. Document it all. We will return to medical evidence preservation below.
What Your Case Is Worth: An Honest Range
No attorney can tell you what your case is worth on day one. The range below is grounded in what we see in cases with similar facts — minor physical injuries in a serious incident, with a high-profile defendant and a venue where juries expect safety. The final number depends on the medical record, the liability proof, and what the evidence preservation turns up.
Low end: $45,000. This reflects a case with the discharge-from-the-ER outcome the public record describes — scratches and lacerations treated and released, full physical recovery, no lasting impairment. The number is driven by medical specials, a modest settlement of the third-party claim against the contractor, and the workers’ comp benefits that have already been paid.
High end: $185,000. This reflects a case where the back injury lingers, where psychological symptoms develop (PTSD, anxiety, sleep disturbance requiring ongoing treatment), where the evidence shows the renovation contractor’s negligence was flagrant, and where the hotel had prior notice of bear activity on the property. The Aspen/Pitkin County venue and the Marriott profile increase settlement pressure.
Above the high end. If the medical record produces a permanent impairment rating, if the PTSD requires ongoing mental-health treatment for years, or if the evidence reveals egregious conduct by any defendant (prior bear incidents on the property, ignored warnings, a contractor with a known pattern of leaving doors unsecured), the value climbs. We have seen cases with similar fact patterns resolve well into six figures when the long-term medical picture and the liability proof both cooperate. The final number is built from records, not from headlines.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The honest framing is this: the workers’ comp case pays the medical bills and replaces part of your wage, and it is no-fault. The third-party tort case pays for the rest — the pain, the fear, the long-term consequences, and the full measure of what the bear took from you. We work both roads.
The Workers’ Compensation Lane: What You Get and What You Don’t
Let us be precise about what workers’ comp provides in Colorado, because the adjuster is counting on you not knowing.
Medical care — fully covered. All reasonable and necessary medical treatment for the bear-attack injuries is paid by the workers’ comp insurer. You do not pay co-pays or deductibles. You do not need to choose between “in-network” and “out-of-network.” If your doctor prescribes physical therapy, mental-health counseling, imaging, or surgery, the comp insurer pays. If the comp insurer denies treatment you need, we appeal — Colorado’s Division of Workers’ Compensation has a formal dispute process that gives you a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge.
Temporary disability — partial wage replacement. If you cannot work while you heal, you are entitled to temporary total disability (TTD) at two-thirds of your average weekly wage, subject to a state maximum that adjusts annually. If you can work in a limited capacity but earn less, you are entitled to temporary partial disability (TPD) at two-thirds of the wage difference. These benefits are tax-free.
Permanent disability — impairment-based. Once you reach maximum medical improvement (MMI) — the point at which further treatment will not improve your condition — a doctor assigns an impairment rating. Colorado pays permanent partial disability (PPD) based on that rating and your wage. The math is fixed by statute and is not negotiable, but the rating itself is often contested, and we fight for an accurate rating.
What workers’ comp does NOT give you. No compensation for pain and suffering. No compensation for emotional distress. No compensation for the way the attack has changed your relationship with work, with enclosed spaces, with sleep. No punitive damages. No damages for loss of enjoyment of life. Those losses live in the third-party case against the contractor and the hotel.
The Third-Party Lane: Full Tort Damages Against the Hotel and the Contractor
The third-party case is where the full measure of what happened to you gets valued. Colorado tort damages include:
- Economic damages — past and future medical expenses not covered by comp, past and future lost wages, lost earning capacity, out-of-pocket costs.
- Non-economic damages — pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, psychological trauma.
- Physical impairment damages — the lasting consequences of the attack on your body’s function.
- Punitive damages — available in Colorado under C.R.S. § 13-21-102 where the defendant’s conduct shows a “willful and wanton” disregard for the safety of others. A renovation contractor who knew bears were active and left doors propped open anyway could support a punitive claim.
The third-party case is a fight about who is at fault for the bear being in the kitchen, and how much that fault is worth. It is governed by Colorado’s modified comparative negligence rule — if you are found to be 50% or more at fault, you recover nothing. If you are less than 50% at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. For a security guard investigating a report of an animal inside the building, your comparative fault is minimal — you were doing exactly what you were supposed to do.
Evidence Preservation: What Must Be Saved Before It Disappears
This is the most time-sensitive part of your case. The records that prove who left the door open, whether the hotel knew about bear activity, and what the renovation contractor did (or failed to do) are records controlled by other people. Many of them die on clocks measured in days or weeks. We send preservation letters immediately — the day we are retained, before any other move.
Resort surveillance video. The CCTV footage from the courtyard, the kitchen, the corridors, and the back-of-house areas will show the bear’s path and, critically, will show the condition of the doors the bear used. Hotel CCTV commonly rolls over on a 30-day loop — some systems far shorter. The video is being erased right now.
Key-card access records and property-management-system logs. The hotel’s electronic key-card system logs every door open and close. The renovation contractor’s access badges log every entry and exit. These records show whether the courtyard doors were left propped, whether the contractor accessed the building after hours, and whether the hotel’s own staff were entering and exiting through the same doors.
The renovation contractor’s daily logs and project records. General contractors maintain daily logs, safety meeting notes, work-permit records, and project photographs. These records document the conditions on the property each day of the renovation, including which doors were open, which were closed, and which were being worked on.
Incident reports from the hotel. Hotels generate incident reports the same day an event occurs. The hotel’s incident report from the night of the attack, the internal investigation notes, and any prior incident reports involving wildlife on the property are all discoverable.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife investigation report. CPW responded to the scene after the Aspen Police Department notified them. Their investigation report, the wildlife officer’s notes, and any prior CPW reports of bear activity in the area or on the property are public records we can obtain.
Your medical records. Every provider you see, every prescription you fill, every imaging study and every physical therapy session becomes part of the damages record. Continue treatment. Document everything. Tell every provider about every symptom, including the ones that seem minor or embarrassing.
Prior bear incidents on the property. If bears have gotten into the hotel before, or if CPW has prior reports of bear activity at this address, those records establish the hotel’s notice. CPW maintains an incident database; public-records requests and discovery will surface prior reports.
Your employment and contract records. Your security license, your employment contract (or the contract between the security-services company and the hotel), your training records, your prior shift logs, and the hotel’s staffing schedule for the night of the attack. These records establish your status, your duties, and the scope of the hotel’s responsibility for your safety.
The fastest-dying record in your case is the CCTV footage. The video that shows the bear’s path, the propped door, and the hotel staff’s response is being erased on a rolling loop right now. Send the preservation letter today. Tomorrow is too late for last week’s footage.**
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook: Three Moves You Will See
Insurance adjusters handling premises-liability cases involving commercial hotels and contractors use a small set of well-rehearsed moves. We see them in every case. Knowing what is coming is half the defense.
Move 1: The Friendly Recorded Statement. Within days of the attack, an adjuster from the hotel’s liability carrier (or the contractor’s carrier) will call to “check on you” and “see how you are healing.” The conversation is friendly, sympathetic, and is being recorded. The adjuster’s job is to get you to say things that shrink the case — “I’m feeling better,” “the scratches are healing fine,” “I think I can go back to work next week.” Anything you say on that recording can be quoted back to you at the settlement table or, if the case goes to trial, in front of a jury. The counter: you do not give a recorded statement without us. You tell the adjuster you have retained counsel and all communication goes through our office. We will set up the statement when we are ready, on our terms, with preparation.
Move 2: The Wild-Animal Defense. The adjuster will tell you the attack was an “act of God” — unpredictable, uncontrollable, nobody’s fault. Bears are wild animals; the hotel could not have prevented it. The counter: an act of God is a defense only when the danger was truly unforeseeable and no precautions could have prevented it. In Aspen, at the base of Aspen Mountain, during a renovation that opened access points in known bear habitat, a bear in the building was foreseeable. The question is not whether bears exist; the question is whether the hotel and the contractor took reasonable steps to keep them out. CPW publishes wildlife-management guidance for commercial properties in bear country. The hotel knew or should have known.
Move 3: The Workers’ Comp Redirect. The hotel’s adjuster will tell you the workers’ comp system is your exclusive remedy and that any tort claim you are considering is barred. The counter: workers’ comp is the exclusive remedy against your direct employer. It is not the exclusive remedy against the renovation contractor, the property owner, or any other third party whose negligence contributed to your injury. The comp adjuster and the tort adjuster work for different entities with different interests. The tort adjuster’s statement about comp exclusivity is, at best, a partial truth designed to limit the carrier’s exposure. We work both lanes.
Move 4 (bonus): The Quick Check With a Release Attached. Within weeks, you may receive a settlement offer from one of the carriers. The check will look reasonable for an ER-visit case. The release buried in the paperwork will permanently close every claim you have — the workers’ comp reimbursement claim, the third-party tort claim, and any future claim for complications. The counter: do not sign anything before we review it. Settlement of a premises-liability claim for a bear attack that involved multiple defendants and a complex medical picture is not a five-minute decision. We negotiate the full value of every claim against every defendant, and we make sure the releases are properly limited.
The Colorado Modified Comparative Fault Rule
Colorado follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 50% bar. Under C.R.S. § 13-21-111, if you are found to be 50% or more at fault, you recover nothing. If you are less than 50% at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault.
For a security guard investigating a report of an animal inside the building, your fault is minimal. You were doing your job. You had no reason to expect a bear in the kitchen. The defense will argue you should have checked more carefully, used a different approach, or waited for backup — but those arguments run into the question of what a reasonable guard could have done differently when responding to a report of an animal inside a hotel. The answer, in almost every case, is nothing.
Colorado Statute of Limitations and Filing Deadlines
Colorado gives you specific windows to file your claims. Miss them and the right to recover is gone forever.
Workers’ compensation claim — C.R.S. § 8-43-103. You have two years from the date of injury to file your workers’ comp claim, or two years from the date of the last payment of compensation, whichever is later. For a bear attack treated at the ER and released, the two-year clock starts on the day of the attack.
Personal injury lawsuit (third-party claim) — C.R.S. § 13-80-102. Colorado’s general personal-injury statute of limitations is two years from the date the injury was or should have been discovered. For a bear attack, that is two years from the date of the attack.
Wrongful death — C.R.S. § 13-21-201 et seq. If the injury is fatal, the wrongful-death statute of limitations is two years from the date of death. This is a separate clock from the injury date.
Premises liability specifically. Colorado’s Premises Liability Act does not create its own statute of limitations; it is governed by the general two-year personal-injury statute.
Discovery rule. Colorado’s discovery rule applies where the injury was not immediately apparent. For a bear attack, the injury is immediate, so the discovery rule is unlikely to extend the deadline — the two-year clock runs from the day of the attack.
The two-year deadline sounds generous until you realize how much work a case like this requires. Evidence preservation, witness interviews, expert retention (a wildlife biologist, a premises-security expert, a life-care planner if the injuries are long-term), medical record collection, and settlement negotiations take months. We start work on day one so we never run out of time.
The First 72 Hours: A Roadmap
If you are reading this in the days after the attack, here is the order of operations.
Day 1. Seek medical care if you have not already. Tell every provider about every symptom — the back pain, the nightmares, the anxiety about returning to work. Document everything. Photograph your injuries. Save every receipt, every discharge paper, every prescription.
Day 1. Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance adjuster. Tell them you have retained counsel and will be in touch. We send the preservation letter the same day.
Days 1–3. We send litigation-hold and preservation letters to the St. Regis Aspen Resort / Marriott, the renovation general contractor, every subcontractor whose work touched the courtyard doors, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and Aspen Police Department. We request preservation of CCTV, key-card logs, incident reports, contractor daily logs, project photographs, CPW investigation files, and police CAD records.
Days 1–7. We file your workers’ compensation claim with the Colorado Division of Workers’ Compensation. We request all medical records from the treating hospital and any follow-up providers. We obtain your employment records and the security-services contract.
Days 7–30. We interview witnesses — other security guards on shift that night, hotel staff, renovation workers, first responders. We retain a wildlife biologist to establish that bear activity in the Aspen area was foreseeable and that the hotel and contractor failed to follow CPW guidance. We retain a premises-security expert to establish the standard of care for a luxury hotel during renovation.
Days 30–90. We file the third-party complaint against the hotel, the renovation contractor, and any other responsible parties. We serve discovery requests. We begin negotiating with the carriers — but we do not settle until the medical picture is clear.
How Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña Work This Kind of Case
Ralph Manginello has spent more than 27 years trying cases in courtrooms in Texas and across the country. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — the habit of digging for the record behind the story is the one he brought into the courtroom. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and has tried cases involving premises liability, commercial-vehicle crashes, wrongful death, and catastrophic injury. He knows how to read a renovation contractor’s daily logs and find the entry that proves the door was left open. He knows how to put a wildlife biologist on the stand and make the expert’s testimony land with a Pitkin County jury. He knows that the workers’ comp case and the third-party case have to move in parallel, and he has the infrastructure to move both.
Lupe Peña is a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years on the other side of this exact kind of case — defending hotels, contractors, and carriers against premises-liability claims. He knows how the adjusters think because he used to give them advice. He knows the recorded-statement playbook because he wrote the questions. He knows the comparative-fault arguments because he made them. Now he uses that knowledge for injured people. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Together, we work the workers’ comp lane and the third-party tort lane on the same case, in the same office, without handing the file off to a different firm. We know where the evidence dies. We know how the defense builds its case. We know what a Pitkin County jury expects from a luxury hotel that lets a bear into the kitchen. We are not learning any of this on your case — we have done it.
You can reach us at 1-888-ATTY-911 for a free consultation. There is no fee unless we win. You pay nothing up front; we advance the costs of investigation and expert retention; we are paid out of the recovery we obtain for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
I was attacked by a bear inside the St. Regis Aspen. Do I have a case?
Yes. You have at least two separate claims: a workers’ compensation claim against your direct employer (no-fault, pays your medical bills and part of your wages) and a third-party tort claim against the hotel and the renovation contractor whose negligence allowed the bear into the building. The third-party case is where you recover for pain and suffering, emotional distress, and the full long-term consequences of the attack. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 for a free case evaluation.
Can I sue the hotel if I am a Marriott employee?
Not for pain and suffering — Colorado workers’ compensation exclusivity bars tort claims against your direct employer. But you can sue the renovation contractor, the property owner (if different from the operator), and any other third party whose negligence contributed to your injury. We also examine whether you were actually a direct Marriott employee or were supplied by an outside security-services company — the analysis changes the available defendants.
How long do I have to file a claim in Colorado?
Two years from the date of injury for both the workers’ compensation claim under C.R.S. § 8-43-103 and the third-party personal-injury claim under C.R.S. § 13-80-102. If the injury is fatal, the wrongful-death statute of limitations under C.R.S. § 13-21-201 is also two years from the date of death. These deadlines are hard — missing them can end your case forever.
What if the hotel says it was an “act of God”?
The act-of-God defense fails when the danger was foreseeable and reasonable precautions could have prevented it. In Aspen, at the base of Aspen Mountain, during a renovation that opened access points in known bear habitat, a bear entering the building was foreseeable. Colorado Parks and Wildlife publishes wildlife-management guidance for commercial properties in bear country. The hotel and the contractor knew or should have known and failed to act.
What is my case worth?
For the third-party tort claim against the hotel and the contractor, the realistic range based on the facts we see is roughly $45,000 to $185,000, depending on the medical record, the liability proof, and the long-term consequences. If the injuries produce a permanent impairment or lasting PTSD requiring years of treatment, the value climbs. Workers’ comp benefits (medical care, temporary disability, permanent partial disability) are separate and pay regardless of fault.
Will I have to go to court?
Most premises-liability cases settle before trial. The insurance carriers know the evidence — the surveillance video, the contractor’s logs, the CPW report — and they know what a Pitkin County jury will do with a luxury hotel that let a bear into the kitchen. Settlement is the most common outcome. But we prepare every case as if it will go to trial, and we do not settle for less than the case is worth.
What about the workers’ comp insurance company — are they on my side?
They are not on your side. They are required to pay benefits, and we work with them to get the benefits paid. But the comp carrier will resist every treatment request, dispute every impairment rating, and try to close your file as quickly as possible. If the comp carrier denies treatment or terminates benefits, we appeal to the Colorado Division of Workers’ Compensation and, if necessary, to the Administrative Law Judges.
What if I already gave a recorded statement to an adjuster?
It is not fatal. We review the statement and work with the recorded transcript. Going forward, do not give any statement without us. If an adjuster contacts you directly, refer them to our office.
What if the bear came in through a door the renovation contractor left open?
That is the strongest liability theory in the case. The renovation contractor created the access point. Their negligence is independent of the hotel’s. We name the contractor as a defendant, pursue their liability insurance, and develop the proof from the contractor’s own daily logs, work permits, and project photographs.
Will I have to pay anything up front?
No. We work on contingency. No fee unless we win. We advance the costs of investigation, evidence preservation, expert retention, and litigation. You pay nothing out of pocket. Our fee is a percentage of the recovery we obtain — agreed in writing before we begin work.
Do I need to keep treating with doctors even if I feel fine?
Yes. The medical record is the foundation of your case. Stopping treatment creates gaps the defense will exploit. Continue with your providers. Report every symptom. If psychological symptoms develop — and they often do after a bear attack — seek mental-health treatment. Document everything.
What about the bear itself — will it be killed?
Colorado Parks and Wildlife manages wildlife conflicts under its own policy. CPW will determine what happens to the bear based on public safety, the bear’s history, and the circumstances. Whether the bear is relocated or euthanized does not affect your legal case. We do not control wildlife-management decisions; we control the legal claims for your injuries.
Can I recover for the PTSD from being attacked?
Yes, if PTSD is diagnosed and documented by a qualified mental-health provider. Colorado tort damages include compensation for emotional distress and loss of enjoyment of life. Psychological injury from a predator attack is real, diagnosable, and compensable. The proof requires a treating provider, a diagnosis, and treatment records — which is why you should not wait to seek mental-health care if you are experiencing symptoms.
What if the hotel says I assumed the risk by working security?
Colorado recognizes assumption of risk as a defense in limited circumstances, but it does not apply to a security guard responding to a report of an animal inside the building. You did not assume the risk of being attacked by a bear in a hotel kitchen. The defense will not succeed on this argument.
How do I reach the right attorney for this case?
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 for a free, confidential consultation. We will talk through what happened, identify the available defendants, walk you through the workers’ comp and third-party timelines, and explain what the next 72 hours should look like. There is no obligation, and the consultation is free.
Your Next Step
If you or someone you love was attacked by a bear inside the St. Regis Aspen Resort, the next move is to call us. We are not a referral service — we work the case ourselves, from the first preservation letter through the final settlement or verdict. We know Pitkin County. We know the bear-management context. We know how to prove a renovation contractor’s negligence from their own records. We know how to put a workers’ comp case and a third-party tort case together so that the full measure of what happened to you is what gets paid for.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. No fee unless we win. We will tell you honestly whether we can help, and if we cannot, we will tell you that too.
We serve Colorado families in English and in Spanish. Hablamos Español. Every consultation is confidential. Every case is built from the evidence, not from the headline.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The bear got into the building because someone left a door open. That is not an act of God. That is negligence. We know how to prove it, and we know how to get you paid for what it cost you.