## Facts

- Fourteen-year-old Darlene Benavidez was injured when a vending machine fell from a truck driven by Irwin Duane Gleason while working for Coin Fresh, Inc.
- She was hospitalized, tested, and diagnosed with a left temporal lobe contusion; she was later readmitted and diagnosed with a left intratemporal lobe hematoma, then discharged as improved.
- After returning to school and normal activities, she and her parents believed she had fully recovered.
- Her parents retained counsel; settlement negotiations later resulted in an agreement to settle for $6,114.35.
- A probate court approved the settlement and appointed her father guardian of her estate; her father executed a general release on her behalf.
- Years later, she began experiencing epileptic seizures diagnosed as post-traumatic epilepsy potentially linked to the accident.
- After becoming emancipated, she sued for additional damages, contending the earlier settlement and release were based on a fundamental mistake about the nature and extent of her injuries.

## Issues

1. Whether a court-approved guardian’s release settling a minor’s personal injury claim may be set aside based on a mistake about the nature and extent of the minor’s injuries, rather than a mistaken prognosis for recovery.
2. Whether summary judgment is proper when the record supports a genuine dispute over whether the release rested on such a basic factual mistake.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals’ reversal of summary judgment for defendants.
- The Court held there was a genuine issue of material fact whether the alleged mistake concerned the nature and extent of the injury (a present or past fact) rather than a prognosis for future recovery.
- Because that dispute could not be resolved as a matter of law on the summary judgment record, the case was remanded for further proceedings to determine whether the release should be set aside.

## Legal Principles

- A personal injury release may be rescinded if it was executed under a basic mistake regarding a present or past fact, including the actual nature and extent of an existing injury.
- A mistake that amounts only to an erroneous prediction about future recovery (prognosis) generally does not justify setting aside a release.
- Court approval of a minor’s settlement and a guardian-executed release does not bar later challenge if the settlement may have been grounded in a basic factual mistake affecting the minor’s interests.
- Summary judgment is improper where evidence permits competing inferences on a material fact, such as whether the settlement was based on an incorrect understanding of the injury’s true character.

## Conclusion

The court required a trial-level determination of whether the guardian’s court-approved release was founded on a basic mistake about the minor’s actual injury, holding that the diagnosis-versus-prognosis characterization presented a genuine factual dispute that precluded summary judgment.


Gleason v. Guzman, 623 P.2d 378 (Colo. 1981)