Sutton Booker is proud to announce Matthew W. Cecil has been promoted to Partner in the firm effective February 24, 2025.
Matt has been defending insurance companies and their insureds for his entire legal career. His practice includes insurance bad faith, personal injury and property damage defense, and commercial matters, among others. He regularly defends cases involving catastrophic injuries and multimillion-dollar property damages.
In his time at Sutton Booker, Matt has helped secure successful trial verdicts. Most recently, he and his Sutton Booker colleagues
successfully defended a premises liability claim against a restaurant and bar at a jury trial in Summit County. Plaintiff alleged an unknown person was allowed to dance on the bar and fell on her. She claimed a knee injury that required surgery and sought over $600,000, arguing the injury had upended her active lifestyle and caused permanent physical impairment. At trial, Matt and the Sutton Booker team showed that, while the unknown person dancing on the bar was predominantly at fault, Plaintiff bore some fault for her injuries as well. Ultimately, the jury placed 85% of fault with the unknown person and Plaintiff and awarded only small amounts for pain and suffering and no damages for impairment. The judgment entered against the bar and restaurant was less than 10% of the last and best settlement offer, and the client was entitled to recover its costs.
Before that, Matt obtained a complete defense verdict for his HOA client after a three-day bench trial in Larimer County. Plaintiffs sought hundreds of thousands in monetary damages and equitable relief, claiming that the HOA failed to manage and even contributed to surface water runoff onto their property and ground water levels beneath it. At trial, Matt highlighted the many other potential causes for Plaintiffs’ alleged water issues and proved the HOA couldn’t have contributed to them. The Court found Plaintiffs had failed to show any causal link between the HOA’s actions and Plaintiffs’ claimed damages and entered judgment in favor of the HOA on all claims, entitling the HOA to recovery of all costs and attorney’s fees. After Plaintiffs appealed the trial verdict and fees award, Matt defended the trial court’s decisions before the Colorado Court of Appeals. The appel
late court affirmed the trial court’s judgments in full and awarded the HOA further costs and attorney’s fees for the appeal.
Matt has obtained many other just results for his clients in his time at Sutton Booker, winning summary judgment for a commercial client on negligent hiring/supervision and negligent entrustment claims with over $500,000 in claimed damages, inducing a walkaway settlement in a multimillion-dollar personal injury claim by uncovering plaintiff’s misrepresentations about lack of causation between the subject accidents and claimed injuries, and capping damages at $5,000 on a contract dispute tried to a jury, among others.
In addition to his practice, Matt is actively involved in the Colorado legal community. He is the Professionalism and Education Director for the Colorado Defense Lawyers Association and is a member of the Board of Directors. He is also a Board Member on the Denver Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division Executive Council. Matt is actively involved in the firm’s mentoring and pipeline recruiting efforts, frequently attending recruiting events at the University of Colorado and University of Denver law schools.
Prior to moving to Colorado and joining Sutton Booker, Matt practiced in both state and federal courts for a large insurance defense firm in the Midwest, where he was born and raised. He obtained his undergraduate degree from DePauw University and his law degree from the University of Missouri School of Law.
Outside of the office, Matt enjoys cooking with his wife and daughter, hiking, and triathlon, and completed his first full-distance Ironman last fall.