What You Need to Know
- Yes, you can sue an uninsured driver. The harder question is whether you can collect. A court judgment against a driver who has no insurance and no reachable assets is often just a piece of paper, not a payment.
- Your own uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage is usually where the money actually is. Nevada requires every auto insurer to offer it in an amount equal to your liability limits (NRS 687B.145), and your policy must include that coverage unless you rejected it in writing (NRS 690B.020).
- A hit-and-run is handled as an uninsured-motorist claim (NRS 690B.020), but Nevada attaches conditions: there generally must have been physical contact, and you must report the crash to police promptly.
- Do not sign a release, take a quick cash offer from the at-fault driver, or give your own insurer a recorded statement before you understand your coverage. Your insurer holds reimbursement rights in your recovery, and the wrong first move can shrink what you collect.
- There is more than one deadline, and they are not the same length. Suing the driver is generally two years from the crash (NRS 11.190(4)(e)). A UM/UIM claim against your own insurer is a contract claim, which Nevada courts have treated as carrying the six-year written-contract period running from the insurer’s refusal to pay. Your policy’s own notice and cooperation deadlines can be far shorter than either. Do not assume a late UM claim is dead.
If you or someone in your family was hit by a driver who had no insurance or who fled the scene, the first question is usually some version of “can I sue this person?” The literal answer is yes. You can almost always file suit against an at-fault driver, insured or not. But that answer, on its own, strands you. A lawsuit is only worth as much as you can actually collect on it, and against an uninsured driver the collection question is where most of the real difficulty lives. This page reframes the problem around the question that determines whether you see a dollar: not “can I sue,” but “where does the money actually come from, and what should I do this week so I do not accidentally give it away.”
The Real Question Is Not “Can I Sue,” It Is “Can I Collect”
Suing is the easy part. You file a complaint, and if the other driver caused the crash, you can likely win a judgment. Collecting on that judgment is a separate problem, and it is the one that catches people off guard.
A driver without insurance may also have little nonexempt income or property a court can reach. When that is true, you can win in court and still receive nothing. Lawyers call this a “paper judgment,” and the driver is often described as “judgment-proof.” Nevada gives you tools to enforce a judgment, including garnishment in aid of execution, but every one of those tools requires the defendant to actually own something reachable. A judgment does not create money that was never there.
There is an honest counterweight worth stating plainly: uninsured does not always mean asset-less. Some uninsured drivers own a home, run a business, or earn a garnishable wage. A quick, sober look at what the driver actually owns, before you commit to a lawsuit against them, is worth doing rather than assuming the answer either way. If the driver does have reachable assets and your losses are modest and property-related, Nevada’s small claims court hears money-only cases up to $10,000 (NRS 73.010), which can be a realistic venue for a damaged vehicle. Serious injuries almost always exceed that ceiling, and they point back to the same place: your own coverage.
Bottom line: The value of suing an uninsured driver depends on what that driver actually owns. Where there is little to collect, applicable UM/UIM coverage is usually the faster and more reliable path, and it is worth checking before you commit to chasing the driver.
What this means for you: Before you spend months and filing fees pursuing the driver, find out two things: does this driver have anything worth collecting, and what does your own coverage already entitle you to. In many cases the second answer makes the first one irrelevant.
What to Do Now, and What Not to Do
If the crash is recent, a few early moves protect your recovery, and a few common ones quietly damage it. These matter most in the first days, before you have talked to a lawyer.
Report the crash to police. This is not just paperwork. If the driver fled, Nevada treats a hit-and-run as an uninsured-motorist claim only when the crash was reported to law enforcement within the required time (more on that below). A prompt report also creates the record your own insurer will ask for.
Notify your own insurer promptly, and take its policy duties seriously. Your policy almost certainly requires timely notice and your cooperation, and those duties are real: refusing or stalling a request the insurer is entitled to make can create a coverage dispute you do not want on top of everything else. Give prompt notice. At the same time, understand that a recorded statement taken while you are injured, medicated, or unsure of the full extent of your injuries is an evidence-gathering event, not a courtesy call. Before you give one, ask what the policy actually requires and get advice. The distinction that matters: you generally have no contractual duty to give a statement to the other driver’s insurer, but your own carrier is a different relationship with obligations attached.
Do not extinguish your real claim to get a fast, small check. This is the mistake that does the most damage and the one generic advice skips. If you sign a release for the at-fault driver, or accept a quick cash or property-damage settlement from them, before you understand your own UM coverage, you can undercut the more collectible claim against your own insurer. Nevada gives your insurer the right to be reimbursed out of any recovery you obtain from the person who caused the crash (NRS 690B.020). Settling with or releasing the driver on your own, without your insurer’s knowledge, can collide with those rights and jeopardize your claim. Understand the full coverage picture first, then decide what to sign.
Your Real Recovery Path: Your Own UM/UIM Coverage
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is the part of your own auto policy that steps in when the at-fault driver has no insurance or not enough of it. It is your coverage, on your policy, paying you, and that surprises a lot of people who assume “uninsured motorist” describes the other driver rather than a benefit they bought.
Nevada leans heavily on this coverage by design. For a policy covering a passenger car or motorcycle, an insurer transacting motor vehicle insurance in the state must offer UM/UIM coverage in an amount equal to the bodily-injury limits you bought (NRS 687B.145(2); subsection 5 excludes general commercial liability, excess and umbrella policies, and anything that is not primary insurance for a specifically insured vehicle). Separately, your policy must include UM coverage unless you rejected it in writing (NRS 690B.020). The practical consequence: you may have meaningful UM coverage sitting on your policy right now even if you do not remember choosing it, because baseline coverage had to be included unless you rejected it in writing, and it had to be offered up to your full bodily-injury limits. The live question in many claims is not whether Nevada requires the coverage, but whether your insurer can actually document that you rejected it.
The two halves of the coverage do different jobs:
| Coverage | What it does | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Uninsured motorist (UM) | Pays for your bodily injuries as if you were recovering from the at-fault driver | The at-fault driver had no liability insurance, or fled and was never identified |
| Underinsured motorist (UIM) | Pays the gap above the at-fault driver’s limits, up to your own UM/UIM limit | The at-fault driver had insurance, but not enough to cover your injuries. UIM reaches “damages … to the extent that those damages exceed the limits of the coverage … carried by that owner or operator” (NRS 687B.145) |
| Medical payments (MedPay) | Pays reasonable medical expenses regardless of fault | Available if offered and purchased; Nevada requires an offer of at least $1,000 in coverage (NRS 687B.145) |
One point that widens who can recover: the policy that helps you may not be the one in your own name. A passenger may be covered under the vehicle’s policy. An injured pedestrian or bicyclist may have UM coverage on their own auto policy that follows them even on foot. A person living in the household may be an insured under a resident relative’s policy. Someone hurt on the job may reach an employer’s coverage. If your first thought is “I do not have insurance for this,” it is worth mapping every policy that might apply before accepting that answer.
What this means for you: Pull your own auto policy’s declarations page and look for uninsured/underinsured motorist limits. That number is the starting point for what your own coverage can pay, not necessarily the total available to you. More than one policy, more than one insured vehicle, another liable party, or coverage in a household member’s name can all add to it, which is why the mapping exercise below is worth doing before you treat any figure as your ceiling.
Hit-and-Run: There Is No One to Sue, but There Is Still a Claim
When the driver flees and is never identified, the instinct is that recovery is impossible because there is no defendant. That instinct is wrong. Nevada law treats an unidentified hit-and-run driver as an uninsured motorist, and your UM coverage is built to respond (NRS 690B.020). The unknown driver becomes, in effect, the “uninsured” party your own policy pays for.
The catch is in the conditions, and this is where careful early action pays off. For an unidentified driver to qualify, Nevada generally requires two things: there must have been physical contact between the vehicles (a true “phantom vehicle” that ran you off the road without touching you is treated differently), the owner or operator must be unknown or not findable after reasonable diligence, and the crash must have been reported to police within the period Nevada’s crash-reporting statutes require. “Promptly” is the safe practical rule, but the governing deadline is a specific one, so report immediately rather than estimating. Nevada also applies a rebuttable presumption that a vehicle involved in a crash causing bodily injury or death was uninsured if no proof of insurance is filed with the DMV within 60 days (NRS 690B.020). That presumption goes to insured status only; it does not establish fault or what anyone owes you. The takeaway is practical: after a hit-and-run, the police report is not optional if you want to keep the UM door open.
When Your Own Insurer Becomes the Opponent
There is an uncomfortable shift built into a UM claim. When you file it, the company paying the claim is your own insurer, and its financial interest now runs opposite to yours: every dollar it pays you is a dollar out of its pocket. That does not make your insurer a villain, but it does change the relationship. A UM claim can involve investigation, requests for records or statements, disagreement about the extent of your injuries, and a low initial offer. Those are features of the process rather than signs you have done something wrong, though handling that is genuinely unreasonable is a separate matter. If your own insurer unreasonably denies or stalls a valid claim, that conduct can rise to bad faith, which is a separate matter with its own remedies.
Coverage can also be larger than the declarations page first suggests. Nevada permits, but regulates, how UM coverage from more than one policy or vehicle combines. A policy may contain a clause that limits stacking, but that clause has to meet statutory requirements, and it is void where you paid separate premiums for full coverage on the same risk (NRS 687B.145). Whether your coverage actually stacks is a policy-language question, not a guarantee, and it is worth investigating rather than assuming. The mechanics of stacking uninsured-motorist coverage and of reaching coverage beyond the at-fault driver’s limits go deeper than this page does; the point here is only that the number on the first offer is not always the last word.
The Three Clocks, and Why Confusing Them Costs People Claims
Almost every article on this topic gives one deadline: two years. That is right for suing the driver and wrong for the claim this page has spent its length pointing you toward.
| What you are pursuing | The clock |
|---|---|
| A tort suit against the at-fault driver | Generally two years from the crash (NRS 11.190(4)(e)) |
| A UM/UIM claim against your own insurer | A written-contract action, generally six years, running from the insurer’s refusal to pay (Grayson v. State Farm, applying NRS 11.190(1)(b)) |
| Your policy’s notice and cooperation duties | Set by the policy, often much sooner than either of the above |
Two consequences follow, and they point in opposite directions.
Do not assume a late UM claim is dead. If more than two years have passed since the crash and you were told you are out of time, that answer may be about the wrong claim. The UM claim against your own carrier is a contract claim on a different and longer clock that starts at denial, not at impact.
Do not relax about the policy’s own conditions. Notice, cooperation, and proof requirements can bite long before any statute runs. Nevada does police unreasonable policy limits here: in State Farm v. Fitts, 120 Nev. 707, 99 P.3d 1160 (2004), the Nevada Supreme Court voided a policy clause requiring suit or arbitration within two years of the accident. But Fitts did not bless ignoring every policy condition, so treat the policy’s deadlines as real while getting advice on which ones are enforceable.
What to Do Next
The practical sequence for someone hit by an uninsured or hit-and-run driver looks less like “sue the driver” and more like “protect and pursue the coverage.”
- Mind the deadlines, plural. They are not the same, and this page’s whole point is that your recovery usually runs through your own policy rather than the driver. Suing the driver is a tort claim, generally two years from the crash (NRS 11.190(4)(e)). A UM/UIM claim against your own insurer is a contract claim, and Nevada treats it that way: in Grayson v. State Farm, 114 Nev. 1379, 971 P.2d 798, the court applied the six-year written-contract period of NRS 11.190(1)(b) and held the clock “did not begin to run until State Farm refused payment” of the claim. So a UM claim can still be alive after the two-year tort deadline has passed. Your policy also carries its own prompt-notice and cooperation duties, which are separate again and can matter much sooner.
- Find your coverage. Pull the declarations page for every auto policy in your household and look for UM/UIM and MedPay limits. If your insurer claims you rejected UM, ask them to produce the signed written rejection.
- Preserve the record. Keep the police report number, photos, the other driver’s information if you have it, medical records, and expense receipts. In a hit-and-run, the report and any physical evidence of contact matter most.
- Get the full picture before you settle anything. The limits available across every applicable policy decide what your claim is realistically worth. Settling or releasing anyone before that picture is complete is the step that most often costs people money.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can an Insurance Company Sue an Uninsured Driver?
Yes. When your insurer pays your uninsured-motorist claim, it steps into your shoes and can pursue the at-fault driver to recover what it paid, a right called subrogation (NRS 690B.020). This is also the reason you should not release or privately settle with the driver on your own: doing so can interfere with your insurer’s reimbursement rights and complicate your own claim. (For underinsured-motorist payments specifically, Nevada bars the insurer from subrogating against the underinsured driver, so the rules differ by coverage type.)
Does Nevada Have a Fund That Pays Me if the Other Driver Was Uninsured?
No. Nevada does not have a state compensation fund that pays crash victims when the at-fault driver has no insurance. Instead, the state addresses the problem through required insurance rules: liability coverage is mandatory for drivers, and insurers must offer you uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage on your own policy (NRS 687B.145). Your own UM coverage is the substitute for the fund that does not exist, which is exactly why carrying it matters so much.
The Uninsured Driver Might Face Charges. Does That Get Me Paid?
Not directly. Driving without insurance and leaving the scene of a crash can carry criminal or administrative consequences for the other driver, but a citation, a charge, or even a conviction does not pay your medical bills or repair your car. Criminal penalties punish the driver; your compensation comes through the civil and insurance side, primarily your own UM/UIM claim. The two run on separate tracks.
The Other Driver Totaled My Car but I Was Not Injured. Does UM Cover My Car?
Usually not. The uninsured-motorist coverage Nevada requires insurers to offer is for bodily injury, not property damage (NRS 690B.020). For the vehicle itself, your options are typically your own collision coverage (which pays to repair or replace your car, minus your deductible) or a direct claim against the driver, including small claims court for amounts up to $10,000 if the driver actually has assets worth pursuing (NRS 73.010).
Should I Use My Health Insurance or Wait for the UM Claim?
Do not let medical bills go to collections while a claim is pending. Your health insurance, and MedPay coverage if you have it, can pay for treatment now, regardless of who was at fault. These sources may later seek reimbursement out of your recovery, so the coordination matters, but leaving bills unpaid to “wait for the UM claim” tends to damage your credit without helping your case. Getting treated and keeping the records is the priority.
I Was Visiting Las Vegas and My Policy Is From Another State. Does My UM Still Apply?
Often it does, but the details can change your recovery. When you are injured in a Nevada crash but your auto policy was written in another state, which state’s uninsured-motorist and stacking rules govern your claim is a real question, and the answer can shift how much coverage is available. Visitors injured in Nevada should not assume their home-state coverage behaves the same way here. It is worth confirming with counsel who handles Nevada claims before relying on assumptions about how your out-of-state policy responds.
If You Were Injured in Las Vegas
Being hit by an uninsured or hit-and-run driver is one of the situations where knowing your own coverage, and protecting it early, matters most. With over 40 years as a personal injury attorney, Jack Bernstein understands how uninsured-motorist claims actually get paid in Nevada, including the coverage layers most drivers do not know they have and the early missteps that can quietly reduce a recovery. If you or a family member was injured by a driver who had no insurance or who fled the scene, Jack Bernstein Injury Lawyers offers a free consultation to review your available coverage, the deadlines that apply, and the path forward. Because more than one deadline can apply, and the one you have been told about may be the wrong one for your claim, it is worth getting that review sooner rather than later. Call (702) 633-3333.
