Las Vegas Premises Liability Attorneys

What Premises Liability Means in Nevada

Premises liability is the area of law that decides when a property owner is responsible for an injury that happened on their property. It is not a guarantee: being hurt somewhere does not automatically make the owner liable. It is a question of whether the owner met the duty Nevada law places on them, and whether falling short of that duty caused your injury.

Here is where most competitor pages (and many insurance adjusters) are working from a version of the law Nevada no longer follows. The old framework sorted visitors into classes: invitees (customers) were owed the highest duty, licensees (social guests) a lower one, and trespassers almost none. You will still see firm websites tell a reader “as an invitee, you were owed the highest duty of care.”

That hierarchy is gone. In Moody v. Manny’s Auto Repair (1994), the Nevada Supreme Court abolished the invitee/licensee status distinctions. In Foster v. Costco (2012), it adopted a single, unified duty of reasonable care under the circumstances owed to all lawful entrants, drawing on the Restatement (Third) of Torts. Your status as a customer versus a guest no longer sets a separate, higher or lower standard.

In practical terms, a Nevada property owner who invites the public in must exercise reasonable care to keep the property reasonably safe. Courts and juries generally look at whether the owner:

• inspected the property for hazards on a reasonable schedule;
• fixed dangerous conditions, or
• warned people about hazards the owner knew or should have known about; and
• looked for hidden dangers, rather than waiting for someone to point them out.

Bottom line: In Nevada, the question is not “what class of visitor were you?” It is “did the owner act reasonably to keep the property safe, and did failing to do so hurt you?”

What this means for you: If a page or an adjuster frames your rights around the old “invitee/licensee” tiers, they are using a map that was retired in 1994. The real question, whether the owner was careless about a danger they could have caught, is usually a question of fact, which means it is rarely something the other side gets to decide on its own.

The “Open and Obvious” Trap

One of the most common things an injured person is told is some version of: “The hazard was right there, you should have seen it, so this is your fault.” On many premises cases, the defense leans hard on the open-and-obvious doctrine, and the framing is meant to make you believe your claim is over before it starts.

It is usually not over. In Foster v. Costco, the Nevada Supreme Court was direct about this: the open-and-obvious nature of a danger is a factor in the comparative-fault analysis. It is not a no-duty rule that automatically defeats the claim. A landowner can still be liable for an open and obvious hazard, because the owner’s duty of reasonable care continues even when a danger is visible. Whether the owner acted reasonably (and whether a distracted shopper reasonably failed to notice) is for the jury, not for the defense to declare.

That distinction matters because of how the other side uses it. Treated as a complete defense, “open and obvious” becomes a lever to push for summary judgment: getting a judge to throw the case out before a jury ever weighs the facts. Knowing that Nevada law makes it a comparative-fault factor rather than a bar is often the difference between a claim that survives and one that is pressured into going away cheaply.

Bottom line: “You should have seen it” reduces what you can recover only to the extent you were actually at fault; it does not, by itself, end a Nevada premises claim.

A full treatment of how this plays out (including the distraction and foreseeability arguments) lives in our explainer on the open-and-obvious doctrine in a slip-and-fall case. What actually counts as a dangerous condition in the first place is covered in what constitutes a hazardous condition.

Where Premises Cases Happen

Premises liability covers a wide range of places and fact patterns. The legal framework above is the same across them, but the evidence that matters, the deadlines that bite, and the defendants who exist differ by venue, which is why each has its own page with the operational detail.

The Las Vegas market also produces venue-specific claims at large retailers and resorts: grocery stores, pharmacies, malls and shopping centers, gas stations, fast-food restaurants, arenas and stadiums, convention centers, and nightclubs and dayclubs. Each of those has its own category page, and within them we handle claims against the specific national retailers and Strip resorts where these injuries cluster.

What this means for you: You do not need to know the legal label for what happened. Pick the situation that matches, follow the link, and the page that owns your fact pattern will tell you what evidence to protect and what deadlines apply.

To find your venue, start with the closest category: grocery store · retail store · pharmacy · mall / shopping center · gas station · fast food · arena / stadium · convention center · nightclub / dayclub.

Crimes and Assaults on a Property

If you were hurt because another person attacked you (a beating in a parking garage, an assault outside a bar, a shooting at an apartment complex), your claim runs on a different track than a slip on a wet floor. This is sometimes called negligent security, and it turns on foreseeability rather than the hazard-condition rules above. Where the property is a hotel, motel, or similar lodging, Nevada has a specific statute, NRS 651.015, that governs an innkeeper’s liability for a third party’s criminal act. For other properties (an apartment complex, a bar, a parking garage), Nevada courts apply the same core foreseeability idea under general negligence law rather than that statute.

The central question is the same either way: should the property have anticipated the risk and taken reasonable security measures? In Humphries v. New York-New York Hotel & Casino, 133 Nev. 607, 403 P.3d 358 (2017), the Nevada Supreme Court held that a venue can be liable when prior similar incidents made a criminal act foreseeable. And “similar” does not require an exact match to what happened to you. Courts look at the totality of the circumstances: the location of the attack, the level of violence, and the security concerns a reasonable operator would recognize.

Two points the other side would rather you not know:

• A venue cannot duck the duty by outsourcing it. A property that hires an outside security company still owes a non-delegable duty for that security under Rockwell v. Sun Harbor Budget Suites, 112 Nev. 1217, 925 P.2d 1175 (1996). “The security vendor handled that” is not a defense to the property’s own responsibility.
• “The crowd did it” is not an answer. Collapsing responsibility into a faceless crowd or an unidentified attacker does not erase a property’s separate duty to provide reasonable security.

Bottom line: A crime committed by someone else can still be the property’s legal responsibility if the danger was foreseeable and reasonable security was missing. Hiring a security contractor does not transfer that responsibility away.

This is hub-level framing; the foreseeability proof and the security-specific evidence are developed on the casino injury page and the bouncer assault and excessive-force page.

If You Were a Trespasser

Many people assume that if they were somewhere they were not strictly supposed to be, they have no claim. Nevada’s rule is narrower than that. Under NRS 41.515, a property owner generally owes no duty of care to a trespasser, but the statute keeps three exceptions, and they are where these cases live:

• Willful or wanton harm. The owner is still liable for willfully or wantonly causing harm: setting a trap, for example.
• Danger after discovery. Once the owner actually discovers a person in a place of danger on the property, the owner must use reasonable care to prevent harm.
• Injured children (attractive nuisance). A higher standard applies when a child is injured by an artificial condition (a pool, construction equipment, an unsecured hazard) that the owner should have expected to attract children.

Bottom line: “You were trespassing” is the start of the analysis, not the end of it. If you were knowingly endangered, discovered and ignored, or if the injured person was a child drawn to a hazard, an exception may apply.

The child-injury exception is its own subject; we cover it in depth in the attractive-nuisance doctrine in Nevada.

How Nevada Splits the Fault

Insurance adjusters often imply that because you were partly responsible, you cannot recover. That overstates the rule. Nevada uses modified comparative negligence under NRS 41.141: your own negligence does not bar recovery as long as it is not greater than the negligence of the parties you are suing. Practitioners commonly describe this as the 51% bar: if your share of fault crosses into “greater than” the other side’s combined share, recovery is cut off.

Two details that the framing usually leaves out, and that change the math in your favor:

• *The comparison is to the combined fault of everyone you sue, not a single defendant.* Where multiple parties share responsibility (the property owner, a management company, a cleaning contractor, a security vendor), your fault is weighed against all of them together. This is one reason identifying every responsible party early matters so much.
• Below the bar, fault reduces but does not eliminate recovery. If you are found, say, 20% at fault, you do not lose; your recovery is reduced by your percentage.

What this means for you: Being told “you were partly to blame” is not the same as being told you have no case. The questions that decide it are how much fault is assigned to you and how many parties share the rest. Those are exactly the figures the adjuster’s recorded-statement questions are designed to move.

A note on language: the statute itself says “not greater than” and does not contain a literal “51%” figure: that number is the shorthand lawyers use, not a quotation from the law.

How Long You Have to File

In Nevada, you generally have two years from the date of your injury to file a personal-injury lawsuit, under NRS 11.190(4)(e). If a death resulted, a wrongful-death claim generally runs two years from the date of death.

This deadline is not a soft target. With narrow exceptions, missing it ends the claim no matter how clearly the property was at fault. And the practical clock is often shorter than the legal one: the evidence that proves these cases (surveillance video, incident reports, the physical condition that caused the injury, witness memories) degrades or disappears in the first weeks, long before two years pass.

Bottom line: Two years is the outer limit to file. The window to preserve the proof is much shorter, which is why acting early protects the case even if the deadline feels far away.

The specific timing rules, including the narrow circumstances that can delay the clock, are covered in how long after a slip-and-fall you can sue in Nevada.

How the Other Side Will Fight It

Premises claims are defended by insurers and corporate risk departments who do this every day. Knowing their moves ahead of time is part of protecting your claim:

• “It was open and obvious.” As covered above, this is pitched as a case-ender. In Nevada it is a comparative-fault factor, and it is frequently used to pressure an early, low settlement or a summary-judgment dismissal.
• Comparative-fault inflation. Because crossing the 51% bar ends recovery, the other side has a direct incentive to exaggerate your share of fault, often through a friendly-sounding recorded statement taken in the first days, with questions (“Were you in a hurry?” “Had you been there before?”) built to do exactly that.
• “We don’t own the property” / “that’s the vendor’s job.” Large venues often involve layered entities (owner, property manager, cleaning service, security contractor). Pointing at another company can be an attempt to run out the clock or shrink the pool of responsible parties. For outsourced security, Nevada’s non-delegable-duty rule blocks that move.
• The evidence window. Surveillance footage is routinely overwritten on a short cycle, and physical conditions get cleaned up or repaired. Delay favors the defense; a prompt, written preservation demand is what counters it.

What this means for you: None of these tactics requires that you did anything wrong; they are routine. The protection against all of them is the same: get care, preserve evidence, decline the early recorded statement, and get advice before the proof is gone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is premises liability?

Premises liability is the area of law that determines when a property owner or occupier is legally responsible for an injury that happened on their property. In Nevada, it turns on whether the owner exercised reasonable care to keep the property reasonably safe and whether falling short of that duty caused the injury.

Do I have a premises-liability case if I was hurt at a store or casino?

Possibly. You generally need to show that a dangerous condition existed, that the owner knew or reasonably should have known about it, that the owner failed to act reasonably, and that this caused your injury. Whether those elements are met is fact-specific, which is what a free consultation evaluates.

The store said the hazard was “open and obvious.” Does that end my claim?

No. Under Foster v. Costco, an open-and-obvious hazard is a comparative-fault factor a jury weighs, not an automatic no-duty bar. A property owner can still be liable for a danger that was visible.

How long do I have to file a premises-liability claim in Nevada?

Generally two years from the date of injury under NRS 11.190(4)(e), and two years from the date of death for a wrongful-death claim. Narrow exceptions exist, but waiting is risky because the evidence usually disappears long before the deadline.

I was partly at fault. Can I still recover?

Often yes. Nevada follows modified comparative negligence (NRS 41.141): you can recover as long as your fault is not greater than the combined fault of the parties you are suing (the “51% bar”). Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault.

I was assaulted on someone’s property. Is that a premises case?

It is a related but distinct claim, usually called negligent security, analyzed under a foreseeability standard rather than the hazard-condition rules. For hotels and similar lodging, NRS 651.015 sets the innkeeper’s duty for a third party’s criminal act; for other properties, Nevada courts apply the same foreseeability idea under general negligence law. A venue can be liable if the crime was foreseeable and reasonable security was missing, and it cannot avoid that duty by hiring an outside security company.

Can a trespasser ever recover in Nevada?

Sometimes. NRS 41.515 limits the duty owed to trespassers but keeps three exceptions: willful or wanton harm, a failure to use care after the owner discovers a person in danger, and the attractive-nuisance rule protecting injured children.

If You Were Injured in Las Vegas

If you were hurt on someone else’s property anywhere in the Las Vegas area (on the Strip, in Henderson, North Las Vegas, Summerlin, or Pahrump), and you are trying to figure out whether what happened to you is someone’s fault, you do not have to sort it out alone. With over 40 years as a personal injury attorney and more than $500 million recovered in verdicts and settlements, Jack Bernstein understands how Nevada’s premises-liability framework actually works, how insurers and corporate defendants try to shift fault, and how the open-and-obvious and comparative-fault arguments are used to pressure injured people into walking away. Because the two-year filing deadline and the much shorter evidence-preservation window both run from the date of your injury, the time to evaluate your options is now. Jack Bernstein Injury Lawyers offers a free consultation to review what happened, identify who may be responsible, and explain the path forward, and you pay no fees unless we win. Call (702) 633-3333.