Background
Dean Stansbury owns three residential properties in Jefferson County. In 2023, he protested the Assessor’s Office’s valuation of each property to the Board of Equalization (BOE). The BOE adjusted the value of one property and affirmed the valuations of the other two. Stansbury appealed one of the BOE decisions to the Board of Assessment Appeals (BAA), which affirmed it. He did not appeal the other two BOE decisions.
Stansbury then filed a complaint against the Jefferson County Assessor’s Office alleging six claims: (1) failure to assess properties according to statutory and constitutional standards; (2) maintenance of false records; (3) failure to adjust valuations using qualified appraisers; (4) misrepresentation of material facts at BOE and BAA hearings; (5) failure to reclassify properties and apply exemptions; and (6) noncompliance with appraisal standards. The Assessor’s Office moved to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under C.R.C.P. 12(b)(1). The district court granted the motion, finding that claims 1, 3, and 5 constituted untimely tax appeals requiring exhaustion of statutory remedies, while claims 2, 4, and 6 were tort claims barred by the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act (CGIA). The court also awarded the Assessor’s Office attorney fees.
The Court’s Holding
The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s dismissal. The court held that all of Stansbury’s claims are barred by the CGIA, which provides that sovereign immunity bars “any action against a public entity for injury which lies in tort or could lie in tort regardless of whether that may be the type of action or the form of relief chosen by a claimant.” Even if claims 1, 3, and 5 were characterized as negligence claims rather than tax appeals—as Stansbury argued—they would still lie in tort and be subject to CGIA immunity. Claims 2, 4, and 6 explicitly allege conduct arising from tort principles: false records maintenance, misrepresentation, and professional negligence.
The court rejected Stansbury’s argument that the district court erred in dismissing his claims, finding that the district court properly applied the CGIA’s broad immunity language. The court also upheld the mandatory attorney fees award under Section 13-17-201(1), which requires that “when a tort action is dismissed under C.R.C.P. 12(b) before trial,” the defendant “shall have judgment for his reasonable attorney fees in defending the action.” Stansbury’s attempt to invoke the exception for “good faith, non-frivolous claim filed for the express purpose of extending, limiting, modifying, or reversing existing precedent, law, or regulation” failed because he neither stated that purpose nor identified the precedent he sought to change. The court also awarded the Assessor’s Office appellate attorney fees and remanded for determination of the amount.
Key Takeaways
- Property owners challenging property tax assessments must exhaust statutory remedies (protest to Board of Equalization and, if applicable, appeal to Board of Assessment Appeals) before seeking district court review; failure to do so deprives courts of jurisdiction.
- The CGIA broadly bars tort claims against government entities, including claims that “lie or could lie in tort” even if pleaded in different forms, encompassing professional negligence, fraud, and misrepresentation.
- Attorney fees are mandatory—not discretionary—when tort actions against government entities are dismissed under C.R.C.P. 12(b) before trial, with limited exceptions that require specific statutory compliance.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that property owners have no direct judicial avenue to challenge county property tax assessments outside the statutory administrative process. Even if a plaintiff recharacterizes tax assessment disputes as tort or negligence claims, the CGIA’s sweeping language—barring any claim that “lies in tort or could lie in tort”—forecloses relief. This significantly limits the ability to attack assessor decisions once the administrative remedies have been partially (but not fully) exhausted, as Stansbury’s failure to appeal all BOE determinations prevented district court review of any claim.
For attorneys representing property owners, the decision underscores the critical importance of pursuing all available administrative appeals within statutory timeframes before considering any alternative claims. The mandatory attorney fees provision also creates substantial financial risk in attempting creative pleading strategies to circumvent governmental immunity, as defendants can recover fees even in close or novel jurisdictional cases where the plaintiff fails to designate its claims as precedent-changing litigation under the narrow statutory exception.