Ronald M. Sandgrund

Ronald Sandgrund is a well-known trial lawyer and Colorado’s most prolific author of articles and books on Colorado construction and materials defect law and related insurance coverage issues. Mr. Sandgrund has extensive experience litigating construction defect, construction materials, product liability, multi-family community, class action, and insurance lawsuits, and he has argued many cases before the Colorado Court of Appeals, Colorado Supreme Court, and U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr. Sandgrund has received the Best Lawyers in America© designation, including Best Lawyers© “Lawyer of the Year – Construction Litigation – Denver,” for 2013 and 2019. Mr. Sandgrund files friend-of-the-court (amicus) briefs expressing homeowner-advocacy groups’ views, and federal and state court opinions have referred to his writings many times.

Mr. Sandgrund also lectures to the public and teaches continuing legal education and graduate courses on insurance, construction, and civil liability matters. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado School of Law, where he teaches Philosophy of Entrepreneurship, and lectures on contracts, torts, professional responsibility, trial advocacy and consumer rights.

He has written many articles on these same subjects, as well as new lawyer practice guidelines and topical essays for The Colorado Lawyer and the Denver Bar Association’s The Docket. Mr. Sandgrund co-authored with Scott Sullan and Leslie Tuft Residential Construction Law in Colorado, first published in 2005 and updated every two years.

This book received the 2011 National Award of Professional Excellence from the Association for Continuing Legal Education. He co-wrote a chapter on residential construction in the multi-volume treatise The Practitioner’s Guide to Colorado Construction Law (Robert Benson, ed.), first published in 1999 and updated bi-annually.

Mr. Sandgrund also co-authored with Scott Sullan and Leslie Tuft “Class Counsel’s Professional Responsibilities,” a chapter included in the legal ethics treatise Lawyers’ Professional Liability in Colorado: Preventing Legal Malpractice and Disciplinary Actions (Michael Mihm, ed.), which is updated annually.

Mr. Sandgrund served as co-counsel with Scott Sullan in a class action trial resulting in a verdict on all liability issues presented to the jury, a case believed to be the largest residential home expansive soils case ever tried to a jury, and one of the few class lawsuits ever to reach trial in Colorado.

Mr. Sandgrund helped negotiate Colorado’s largest homebuilder construction defect related settlement on behalf of more than 12,300 homeowners, and also reached a $32.5 million settlement on behalf of the owners of more than 12,000 homes with defective and leaking windows.

EDUCATION:

• University of Colorado School of Law, Boulder, Colorado, 1982 (awarded honorary Order of the Coif)
• State University of New York at Albany, June 1979, Bachelor of Arts

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS:

• Member, Colorado Supreme Court Committee on Civil Jury Instructions, 2013 – Present
• The Presidents Seminar (Boulder, CO), 2008-Present
• Member, Bar Journal Advisory Board, The Colorado Lawyer, 2011-2016

BAR ADMISSIONS : Colorado, 1982

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS:

• Member, Colorado Supreme Court Committee on Civil Jury Instructions, 2013 – Present
• The Presidents Seminar (Boulder, CO), 2008-Present
• Member, Bar Journal Advisory Board, The Colorado Lawyer, 2011-2016