$31.8 Million Verdict for Family of Woman Killed in 2018 Heather Gardens Gas Explosion
After trial: On appeal: the trial court capped the Ross heirs' noneconomic damages, and the Colorado Court of Appeals (2025 COA 31) held the felonious killing exception can reach a corporation and remanded. The Colorado Supreme Court granted review in November 2025, so the amount Xcel owes for its 12 percent share is undecided.
A Denver jury awarded $31.8 million to the family of an 82-year-old woman killed and other residents injured when a punctured Xcel Energy gas line exploded at Heather Gardens retirement community in 2018, assigning Xcel 12% of the fault.
What happened
On November 16, 2018, construction crews working on a fiber optic cable installation project near the Heather Gardens retirement community in Aurora struck an underground gas line. The ruptured line fed natural gas into the building. Carol Ross, 82, was told to return to her unit and shelter in place while emergency responders assessed the situation. Roughly 80 minutes after Aurora Fire was first called, the gas ignited. The explosion killed Carol Ross and injured several other residents, including Sandra Staley, Paul Staley, Ronald Achenbach, Gloria Achenbach, and Judy DeTar.
The case, filed as Estate of Carol Ross et al. v. Xcel Energy (Denver District Court, Case No. 2020 CV 33286), went to trial in February 2023 before Judge Stephanie Scoville. Multiple parties had already settled before trial, including Comcast and several contractors. Xcel Energy remained as the sole defendant.
Burg Simpson attorneys Michael Burg, Holly Kammerer, Shane Fulton, and Jessica Prochaska presented evidence that Xcel had repeatedly failed to enforce its own pipeline protection procedures. In the weeks before the explosion, excavators had struck Xcel gas lines on at least three separate occasions in the area. Each time, Xcel declined to issue warning letters, levy fines, or order construction to stop. Plaintiffs argued that pattern of inaction left the gas infrastructure and the people living near it exposed to a foreseeable and preventable risk.
The jury deliberated for two days before returning a gross verdict of $31,800,000 across all plaintiffs. The wrongful death award to Carol Ross's heirs alone totaled $15,000,000. Judy DeTar received $1,825,000 for her personal injuries. The jury allocated fault across seven parties: Bohrenworks, the subcontractor that struck the line, bore the largest share at 26%; Aurora Fire Rescue was assigned 18%; Comcast and Integrated Communication Services each received 14%; Underground Communications was assigned 9%; Heather Gardens Association was assigned 7%; and Xcel Energy was assigned 12%, the fifth-highest share among defendants. Under Colorado's proportionate liability rules, Xcel's share of the gross verdict amounted to roughly $3.8 million, and the jury did not award punitive damages. After trial, the district court reduced the wrongful death heirs' noneconomic damages to $436,070 under Colorado's Wrongful Death Act cap, having ruled that the statute's felonious killing exception did not lift the cap for a corporate defendant. In a March 2025 decision of first impression (Ross v. Public Service Company of Colorado, 2025 COA 31), the Colorado Court of Appeals reversed in part, holding that the felonious killing exception can apply to corporations and that the trial court erred in the order it used to apply the cap, and remanded the case.
Law Week Colorado recognized the result among the top verdicts in Colorado for 2023.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Denver7 (KMGH) - Xcel found partly responsible for deadly 2018 Heather Gardens explosion·Archived copy
- 2.Denver7 (KMGH) - Juror provides inside look into Xcel lawsuit verdict·Archived copy
- 3.9News (KUSA) - Jury returns multimillion dollar verdict in deadly Heather Gardens explosion
- 4.Law Week Colorado - Top Verdicts 2023 (Estate of Carol Ross listed)·Archived copy
- 5.Colorado Court of Appeals - Ross v. Public Service Company of Colorado, 2025 COA 31·Archived copy
- 6.Colorado Politics, Appeals court says Xcel may be held liable for felonious killing after Aurora home exploded, March 26, 2025
- 7.Colorado Supreme Court, Case Announcements, November 17, 2025
More proven verdicts from Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh Jardine
All Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh Jardine proven verdicts →A Maricopa County jury awarded $58.5 million to families who donated deceased relatives' bodies believing they would be used for medical research, only to learn the Biological Resource Center of Arizona had dismembered and sold the remains to brokers worldwide.
A federal jury awarded Georgina Perez $55.5 million after a Sunbeam Express Crock Multi-Cooker lid blew off and caused severe burns; the court later reduced the award to roughly $9.1 million under Colorado's statutory damages cap.
A Sears technician miswired Jacqueline Gebert's electric stove in January 2019, and she was electrocuted while lifting a pan. An Arapahoe County jury found Sears negligent and awarded $2,700,000, made up of $2,000,000 in noneconomic damages and $700,000 for physical impairment. The court cut the noneconomic part to the $468,010 statutory limit, so $1,168,010 stood. The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed in 2023 and upheld the cap against a Seventh Amendment challenge.
Burg Simpson secured a confidential settlement for the three children of Jason Varnish, 46, a New Jersey finance executive who died of positional asphyxiation after his jacket became entangled in a Blue Sky Basin chairlift at Vail in February 2020.
Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.