An electrical injury is one of the few kinds of harm where the most serious damage is the part you cannot see. A small burn on a hand or foot can sit above muscle, nerve, and heart tissue that the current cooked on its way through. A quick look at the skin will miss that damage, and it can keep developing for days. The second thing most people miss is just as costly: in a workplace, a rental, or a venue, the person or company that caused the hazard is often not the only one legally responsible, and sometimes not even the obvious one.
This page is built around those two blind spots (how serious the injury really is and who is actually on the hook), because they are the two questions that decide whether someone recovers what their injury is worth or settles for a fraction of it.
What You Need to Know
- The injury is often worse than it looks. Electrical current travels through the body along muscle, nerves, and blood vessels, concentrating heat deep inside while the skin shows only small entry and exit marks. Surgeons and emergency physicians treat the visible burn as an unreliable guide to the real damage, because the internal injury along the current’s path can be far larger than the surface wound suggests. (StatPearls / NIH)
- Some of the damage shows up late. Muscle breakdown (rhabdomyolysis) can threaten the kidneys; pressure can build in a limb (compartment syndrome) over hours; and neurological problems can appear weeks to months after the shock. This is why a thorough electrical-injury workup looks for what isn’t yet visible. (PLOS ONE)
- Liability is usually layered. A property owner, a general contractor, an electrical contractor, a utility, and an equipment manufacturer can each owe a separate duty. The right defendant depends on what failed and who controlled it, and Nevada law often lets you pursue more than one.
- Workers’ compensation is not the end of the road. If a non-employer caused the injury, Nevada’s workers’-comp exclusive-remedy rule does not bar a separate claim against that third party. (NRS 616A.020)
- OSHA and electrical-safety standards are evidence, not the lawsuit itself. A safety violation helps prove that someone fell below the standard of care; it is not, by itself, the legal claim.
- There is a deadline. In Nevada, the statute of limitations for most injury claims is two years from the date of injury. (NRS 11.190)
Why Hire Jack Bernstein Injury Lawyers?
Jack G. Bernstein, Esq. has been protecting the rights of injured victims and their families for over 40 Years.
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The staff, especially Janette, are the ultimate in professionalism, response and results. After being in a life-threatening accident, that was no fault of my own, Jack Bernstein and his very capable staff completely handled every aspect of my very complicated injury case. We always felt heard, cared for, and the experience of the staff is second to none. They were able to resolve my case in 18 months, and our lives have been made whole again. You feel like you are part of their family, and no one is ever too busy to talk with you or answer any questions. From the 1st phone call to closing the case, there is no doubt we chose the best law firm. We are grateful for all they have done, and highly recommend Jack Bernstein and his amazing staff for all their time, attention and assistance in fighting for an end result that we are truly grateful for. Bob, Brian, Blake, Janette and Jack, thank you for all you have done. We will always speak well of you all.
If This Just Happened
If you or a family member was shocked, burned, or hit by an arc flash recently, even if everyone “seems fine,” a few steps protect both health and any future claim:
- Get evaluated, even without a dramatic wound. Because the heart can be affected, emergency clinicians commonly check an electrocardiogram (ECG) after an electrical shock, and may monitor for a period when the exposure or symptoms warrant it. Tell the provider it was an electrical injury, not just a burn: the workup is different. (StatPearls / NIH)
- Watch for delayed signs in the days that follow: dark or tea-colored urine, a limb that grows tense or painful out of proportion to the visible burn, numbness, weakness, confusion, or memory trouble. These can signal the internal injuries described below and are worth urgent medical attention.
- Preserve the scene and the equipment. Photograph the tool, outlet, panel, wiring, or overhead line involved, and try to keep the actual item from being repaired, discarded, or “fixed” before it can be examined. The hardware is often the single most important piece of evidence.
- Be careful with the insurance call. A recorded statement taken in the first days, while you still don’t know how serious the injury is, can be used to minimize your claim later. You are not required to give one on the spot.
Each of these is expanded below. The deadline to file a claim is real but not immediate; the evidence window is the part that closes fast.
Why an Electrical Injury Is Often Worse Than It Looks
The single most important thing to understand about electrical injury is why the skin lies. Whether the visible burn is small or large tells you very little about what happened inside.
When current enters the body, it does not spread evenly the way heat from a flame does. It follows the path of least resistance, and in the body that path runs through muscle, nerves, and blood vessels, which conduct far better than dry skin or bone. Heat is generated along that internal path, so the worst destruction is frequently deep in a limb or across the chest, while the skin shows only small, well-defined entry and exit marks. Moist or sweaty skin makes this worse: it lowers the body’s resistance and lets more current pass inside, even as it leaves less of a surface mark. (StatPearls / NIH)
This is the core reason an electrical burn is a different injury from a thermal (flame or scald) burn, even when the two look alike on the surface:
| Thermal burn (flame, scald) | Electrical burn | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the damage is | Greatest at the skin, fading inward | Often concentrated deep along the current’s internal path |
| What the surface tells you | Usually reflects the depth fairly well | Can badly understate the internal damage |
| Pattern | A continuous gradient from the surface down | Track-like and patchy, following nerves and vessels |
| Systemic risk | Mostly tied to how much skin is burned | Direct injury to heart, kidneys, and nerves at the moment of shock |
Source: clinical and emergency-medicine literature on electrical injury (StatPearls / NIH; Stanford Health Care, types of burns).
What that internal path can leave behind:
- Deep muscle injury and rhabdomyolysis. When current destroys muscle, the muscle releases proteins (including myoglobin) into the bloodstream. In large amounts this can injure the kidneys, sometimes to the point of kidney failure, a complication driven by damage the surface burn never revealed. (Rhabdomyolysis and electrical/thermal injury (PMC/NIH))
- Compartment syndrome. Swelling inside a limb’s muscle compartments can raise pressure enough to cut off circulation, threatening the limb. It can build over hours, which is why electrical-injury patients are watched for it rather than cleared on the first exam. (High-voltage injury with compartment syndrome (PMC/NIH))
- Cardiac effects. Because current can cross the chest, the heart’s rhythm can be disrupted at the moment of the shock. The clinical picture is nuanced (many low-voltage cases with a normal initial ECG do well), but high-voltage exposures and current paths that cross the chest are taken seriously, and an ECG is a standard early step. (Cardiac arrhythmia risk after electrical accident (PMC/NIH))
- Delayed neurological problems. Nerve and brain effects (numbness, weakness, chronic pain, memory and concentration trouble) can appear or worsen weeks to months later, after the initial injury appears to have healed. (Neurological symptoms following electrical injury (PLOS ONE))
What this means for you: the value of an electrical-injury claim depends heavily on damage that may not be fully visible, or even fully present, at the time of the first medical visit or the first settlement offer. Documenting the full workup, and not closing a claim before the internal and delayed injuries are understood, is often the difference between a settlement that covers the real harm and one that covers only the burn.
Electrical burns themselves overlap with the work of our Las Vegas burn injury attorneys. For the general medical and legal treatment of burns, that page goes deeper. What is specific here is the electrical mechanism above: the reason a modest-looking burn can sit on top of a catastrophic internal injury.
Who’s Actually Responsible
The second blind spot is liability. People hurt by electricity often assume there is one obvious target: the employer whose site it happened on, or the landlord who owns the building. In reality, electrical hazards are usually created and controlled by several different parties, and the law treats each one’s duty separately. Identifying all of them is what protects the full value of a claim, because a single defendant may be underinsured, may have only a sliver of the fault, or may not be the party who actually caused the failure.
Who the responsible parties are depends on what failed and who controlled it:
| Potentially responsible party | Typical electrical-injury fact pattern | Source of the duty / evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Property / premises owner | Faulty or unrepaired wiring in a rental or building; a known hazard left in place | Owner’s duty of reasonable care to lawful entrants; see Las Vegas premises liability lawyers |
| General contractor | Overall site-safety coordination failure on a construction project | Site-control and safety-coordination duties; construction-zone context at Las Vegas construction-zone accident attorneys |
| Electrical contractor | Defective installation, energized-work failures, skipped lockout/de-energizing | Professional standard of care; electrical safe-work practice standards (below) |
| Electric utility | Contact with an overhead high-voltage line below the legal clearance | Nevada’s high-voltage clearance statute, NRS 455.220 |
| Equipment / product manufacturer | A defective tool, panel, appliance, or component | Product liability (strict liability) |
A few features of Nevada law make this layered analysis matter even more than it first appears:
Workers’ compensation does not close the door on the other defendants. If the injury happened at work, workers’ compensation is generally the exclusive remedy against your employer, and you typically cannot sue the employer directly. But that exclusivity runs to the employer (and, in construction, to a “statutory” principal contractor and certain design professionals), not to everyone else. Under NRS 616A.020, the workers’-comp remedy is exclusive “of all other rights and remedies of the employee … at common law or otherwise.” That bars the employer claim, while a separate third-party claim against a non-employer (a different subcontractor, a manufacturer, a utility, an outside property owner) survives. For an injured worker, this is frequently the most valuable part of the case, because a third-party negligence claim can reach damages that workers’ compensation alone does not.
What this means for you: taking workers’-comp benefits is not the same as resolving the case. If a defective product, an outside contractor, or a utility contributed to the injury, a separate claim against that party can still exist on top of the comp benefits. Giving up that claim, or letting its deadline pass, can leave a large part of the recovery on the table.
Overhead power-line contact has its own statute. Nevada law prohibits work that brings a person, tool, or equipment closer to an energized high-voltage overhead line than the required clearance: 10 feet for lines rated 50 kilovolts or less, with greater distances for higher voltages, under NRS 455.220. A related provision, NRS 455.240, addresses liability when a violation causes contact with the line. These clearance rules are a concrete standard against which conduct near power lines is measured.
Multiple defendants are usually liable only for their own share, with key exceptions. Under Nevada’s comparative-negligence statute, NRS 41.141, when recovery is allowed against more than one defendant, “each defendant is severally liable to the plaintiff only for that portion of the judgment which represents the percentage of negligence attributable to that defendant.” In plain terms, fault is divided, and each negligent defendant generally pays only its slice. But the same statute preserves joint and several liability (where any one defendant can be pursued for the whole judgment) in specific categories, including claims based on strict liability (subsection 5(a)) and “an injury to any person or property resulting from a product” (subsection 5(e)). That product-liability exception is one reason identifying a defective tool or component matters: it can change not just who is liable, but how much of the judgment each defendant can be made to pay.
What the Insurance Company Will Do With “It Looks Minor”
The medical reality above, that the visible burn understates the injury, is not just a clinical fact. It is the exact gap an insurer’s valuation tries to exploit. Understanding the moves in advance is part of protecting the claim.
- Anchoring to the surface wound. The early offer often reflects the small visible burn, not the deep-tissue, cardiac, or neurological injury that the workup is still uncovering, or that hasn’t surfaced yet. An offer made before the delayed injuries are documented is, by design, an offer made before the claim is worth what it will be worth.
- Comparative-fault inflation. Because Nevada bars recovery when an injured person’s own fault is greater than the combined fault of the defendants (NRS 41.141, the often-cited “51% bar,” compared against all defendants’ fault combined, not any single one), there is a built-in incentive to argue the injured worker “ignored a warning,” “skipped a procedure,” or “knew the risk.” Shifting fault onto the plaintiff is one of the most direct ways to reduce or defeat a payout.
- “Just take the comp benefits.” Steering an injured worker toward treating workers’ compensation as the whole remedy conveniently sidesteps the third-party claim described above, the part of the case that often carries the larger value.
- The early recorded statement. A friendly call in the first days, before the injured person knows how serious the injury is, captures statements (“I feel okay,” “it was my fault for grabbing it”) that read very differently once the internal injury is understood.
None of these are reasons to panic; they are reasons to be deliberate. The countermeasure is the same in each case: get the full medical picture documented, preserve the physical evidence, and avoid locking in answers, recorded or written, before the injury is understood.
How Electrical-Safety Standards Actually Fit the Case
A common misunderstanding is that an OSHA citation or a code violation is the lawsuit. It is not, and getting this framing right matters, because the wrong framing weakens the case.
Federal workplace electrical-safety rules set out how electrical work is supposed to be done safely. One example is OSHA’s safe-work-practice standard at 29 CFR 1910.333, which requires de-energizing live parts before work and using lockout/tagging procedures. Consensus standards such as NFPA 70E (the standard for electrical safety in the workplace) cover the same ground for hazards like shock and arc flash.
But the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act does not create a private right to sue for a violation. Instead, a violation of these standards is generally used as evidence of the standard of care in an ordinary negligence claim: proof that a defendant did something the safety rules say not to do. (How forcefully that evidence is treated varies; some jurisdictions treat a violation as strong evidence of negligence, others as some evidence of it.) The legal claim is still negligence (or, for a defective product, product liability); the OSHA or NFPA 70E violation is powerful support for that claim, not a substitute for it. Importantly, because it is evidence in a negligence case rather than a workers’-comp matter, this is exactly the kind of proof that can be used against a third party (a contractor, a property owner, an equipment maker) even when the employer is shielded by workers’ compensation.
What this means for you: if there was a safety violation, it is a valuable piece of the case, but it points to a negligence or product claim against a responsible party, not a standalone “OSHA lawsuit.” Framed correctly, it strengthens exactly the third-party claims that carry the most value.
What to Look For and Ask
Once the situation is understood, the practical question is what to do, and how to tell whether someone is genuinely looking out for the injured person rather than the quickest file to close. Grounded in everything above, these are worth raising with any attorney evaluating an electrical-injury case:
- Ask how they will document the hidden and delayed injuries. Because the surface burn understates the harm, the case depends on capturing the deep-tissue, cardiac, and neurological picture, including injuries that may surface later. Someone treating the claim seriously will be focused on the full medical workup, not just the burn.
- Ask who all the potential defendants are. A careful evaluation maps every party who controlled the hazard (owner, general contractor, electrical contractor, utility, manufacturer), not just the obvious one.
- Ask how a third-party claim fits with workers’ compensation. If it happened at work, the question of whether a separate claim against a non-employer exists is central, and worth a direct answer.
- Ask about preserving the equipment. The tool, panel, or component is often the key evidence; ask how it will be secured and examined before it disappears.
- Watch the clock. With a two-year deadline and an evidence window that closes much sooner, delay has a cost. A consultation early is the safe move even when the injury’s full extent isn’t yet known.
You do not have to have all of this figured out before you call. A consultation exists precisely to sort out where a case stands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an electrical injury serious if the burn looks small?
It can be. With electrical injuries, the size of the visible burn is an unreliable guide to the internal damage, because current concentrates heat deep along its path through muscle, nerves, and vessels. Small entry and exit wounds can sit above significant injury to muscle, the kidneys (through muscle breakdown), the heart, or the nervous system. That is why a proper electrical-injury evaluation looks beyond the skin. (StatPearls / NIH)
Can I still sue if I’m already getting workers’ compensation?
Often, yes. In Nevada, workers’ compensation is generally the exclusive remedy against your employer, but it does not bar a separate claim against a non-employer who contributed to the injury, such as a different contractor, an equipment manufacturer, or a utility. (NRS 616A.020) That third-party claim is frequently the most valuable part of an injured worker’s case.
Who can be held responsible for an electrical injury?
Depending on what failed, responsibility can fall on a property owner, a general contractor, an electrical contractor, an electric utility, an equipment manufacturer, or several of them. The right defendants depend on who created and controlled the hazard, which is why identifying all potentially responsible parties is a core part of the case.
Is an OSHA violation the same as a lawsuit?
No. A violation of OSHA’s electrical-safety standards (such as 29 CFR 1910.333) or NFPA 70E does not, by itself, create a private right to sue. It is used as evidence that a party fell below the standard of care in a negligence or product-liability claim: strong support for the case, not the case itself.
How long do I have to file an electrical-injury claim in Nevada?
For most personal-injury claims, Nevada’s statute of limitations is two years from the date of injury, under NRS 11.190. Some situations differ, so it is worth confirming early, and the practical evidence window (the physical equipment, the scene, records) usually closes well before the legal deadline.
What should I do right after an electrical shock?
Get a medical evaluation even if you feel fine and tell the provider it was an electrical injury, watch for delayed signs (dark urine, a tense or painful limb, numbness, weakness, confusion) in the days after, photograph and preserve the equipment involved, and be cautious about giving a recorded statement to an insurer before you know how serious the injury is.
Talk to a Las Vegas Electrical-Injury Lawyer
If you or someone in your family was injured by electrical contact, whether at a job site, in a rental or building, or at a pool, venue, or anywhere a hazard existed, the two questions that decide the outcome are how serious the injury really is and who is responsible for it, and both are easy to underestimate in the first days. With over 40 years as a personal injury attorney, Jack Bernstein understands how multi-party liability and deceptively severe injuries unfold in catastrophic cases like these, including the coordination with medical and engineering evidence that establishes the true extent of the harm and the full set of responsible parties.
Jack Bernstein Injury Lawyers offers a free consultation to evaluate the injury, identify every party who may be responsible, and protect the evidence before it’s lost. The firm has recovered over $500 million in verdicts and settlements for injured Nevadans. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Because Nevada’s two-year deadline runs from the date of injury, it is worth doing sooner rather than later. Call (702) 633-3333.
