Las Vegas property owners have a legal responsibility to maintain safe conditions for anyone who enters their premises. Whether it is a private residence, rental property, or business, failing to fix hazards or warn visitors of potential dangers can lead to serious injuries.
With millions of people visiting Las Vegas each year, the risk of slip and fall accidents remains high, especially when owners cut corners on safety. If you have been hurt in a slip and fall caused by unsafe property conditions, a Las Vegas personal injury lawyer at H&P Law is ready to stand by your side.
Our Las Vegas slip and fall lawyers understand how overwhelming these situations can be, and we are committed to fighting for the justice and financial recovery you deserve. We’re courtroom proven. Client praised.
What to Do After a Slip and Fall Accident in Las Vegas
Victims of a slip and fall accident must take steps to protect their rights from the start. Knowing what to do in an accident like this can make a big difference in your outcome, including who is held accountable and the recovery of damages you obtain. Take a look at these steps to take after a slip and fall accident to protect your rights:
- Call for help. Call 911 to request help for your injuries. In doing so, you create documentation for what occurred and can then pursue legal actions to recover your damages.
- Document everything about the incident. If possible, take photos of the area, document the situation, including all involved parties, and record any witness statements. This information could help you later.
- Get medical care and follow through on all recommended steps from your doctor. This includes any follow-up care recommended to you, including therapy.
- Contact a slip and fall attorney in Las Vegas. The sooner you contact our legal team, the better we can protect your rights and pursue full and fair compensation for you.
After a slip and fall accident, it is critical that you focus on your health and well-being, but also recognize that you may need to file a claim.
As a result, document everything that happens to you along the way, and be sure that, without fail, you are always connected with your attorney about what is happening to you.
Our Las Vegas premises liability lawyer at H&P Law will work diligently to protect you.
Why It Is So Important to Hire an Attorney After a Slip and Fall Claim
As a victim, it is critical that you understand what you are up against. In a slip and fall claim, it is possible – and potentially likely – that you will face opposition to your claims. Insurance companies want to do anything they can to reduce what is paid to you.
H&P Law educates you on your rights, fights for your full compensation, and does not let you become the victim again, especially in these areas:
- We do not let the insurance company limit your right to compensation by tricking you into being at fault.
- Our legal team provides you with guidance along the way to minimize your risks, including keeping your medical records protected and staying off social media.
- We work to negotiate aggressively on your behalf. We are not afraid to go to trial if we need to do so.
Hiring a slip and fall lawyer in Las Vegas means you get someone by your side who truly cares about the end result in this case and how it impacts you. You have an advocate. That is critically important in these situations.
Communicating With Insurance Providers After a Slip and Fall
After a slip and fall, you may feel pressured to call the insurance company right away. Adjusters often sound polite and helpful, but their job is to limit how much the company pays.
Knowing how to handle those first conversations is important because what you say can affect your entire claim.
Common Pitfalls When Speaking With Adjusters
Insurance adjusters may push you for a recorded statement, encourage you to answer questions quickly, or use vague wording to make you downplay your injuries.
These tactics are designed to protect the insurer, not you. Once a statement is made, it can be hard to correct or explain it later.
How an Attorney Shields You From These Tactics
When you work with a Las Vegas catastrophic injury lawyer with H&P Law, you do not have to handle these conversations yourself.
Our team will take every call and respond to every letter so you never feel cornered by an adjuster. By having a professional speak for you, your words can’t be twisted or used against you later in the claim.
A Slip and Fall Case Can Be Serious
The National Safety Council (NSC)’s “Make Fall Safety a Top Priority” compiled data suggesting that slips, trips, and falls are one of the leading causes of accidental death in the United States.
Falls account for over eight million emergency room visits per year, which is the leading cause of visits. It identified the five major causes of slip and fall accidents:
- Lack of slip resistance on walking surfaces
- Poor walking surface conditions
- Poor visibility
- Lack or poor condition of handrails and guardrails
- Poor accessibility
In Nevada, landowners owe a duty of care to their guests to act reasonably in preventing or warning of dangerous conditions. Dangerous conditions include spilled liquid on the floor, tripping hazards like uneven walking surfaces, and open trenches.
Victims of slip and fall accidents may recover from a landowner if they can prove that the landowner or one of its employees caused, knew about, or should have known about a dangerous condition on its property but took insufficient steps to fix the problem or warn guests of the problem, and our team can help with a claim if you suffer an injury.
Visitor Categories and the Property Owner’s Duty of Care
When you step onto someone else’s property, the reason you are there affects the protections you can expect.
Nevada divides visitors into categories, and which category you fall under shapes the owner’s responsibility to keep you safe.
This is important because it often decides how a slip and fall case is handled.
Invitees, Licensees, and Trespassers
If you were visiting for business, such as shopping or dining, you are considered an invitee and owed the greatest level of care. If you were invited as a social guest, you are treated as a licensee, and the owner must still warn you about dangers they already know exist.
Trespassers enter without permission, and under NRS 41.515, property owners generally owe them very limited protection unless unusual circumstances apply.
Standards of Care Differ Between Groups
Invitees are owed the highest duty because their visit supports the property owner’s business. That duty means the owner should check the property for hazards and warn you about unsafe conditions.
As a licensee, you are still protected, but only against dangers the owner already knew about. Trespassers usually have no protection unless the property owner acts recklessly or intentionally.
What Makes a Slip and Fall Case Challenging
In a slip and fall case, proving that the landowner knew about the dangerous condition is often the most difficult part of the case, which is why it is crucial that an attorney is contacted as soon as possible after the accident.
Commercial landowners, like hotels, grocery stores, and banks, usually have video surveillance, but unless they have a reason to preserve the video, there is usually a fairly short time before the video is recorded.
This is why it is so important for you to act fast to get the support you need from our Las Vegas slip and fall lawyer.
Evidence to Support Fault in Your Slip and Fall Accident
As soon as you can, if you contact H&P Law, we can send a preservation-of-evidence letter, letting them know that there was an accident and asking that the video evidence be preserved.
If they fail to do so, there can be negative consequences that a jury is entitled to hear that may weaken their defense. In addition to video, other records, like sweep sheets and cleaning and maintenance records, need to be preserved and can be addressed in a preservation-of-evidence letter.
Perhaps more than any other kind of case, it is critical with slip and fall cases to contact an attorney immediately after the accident. At H&P Law, we know which steps you need to take to protect the evidentiary value of your case. A slip and fall attorney in Las Vegas is committed to working closely with you to fight for the compensation you are owed.
Potential Recovery After a Slip and Fall Case
How much could your slip and fall case be worth? The answer to this is that it depends on how that accident hurt you and impacted your life and well-being at the time of the accident, now, and into the future.
A Las Vegas slip and fall attorney will work closely with you to ensure your rights remain protected and your recovery of any losses remains a priority.
One of the first steps we take is to understand what occurred in your case, so we can then understand who is at fault. We work to gather evidence in this area, but we also look at evidence based on the impact this accident has had on your life. For example, has it made it hard for you to go to work, or are you struggling with chronic pain as a result?
With this information, we can work closely with you to fully examine your losses, which often means gathering as much data as possible from medical witnesses, your doctor’s records, and even friends and family who can attest to the challenges you now have.
We will also use other cases like your own to fight for compensation. Take a look at some of the types of compensation that our attorneys may be able to help you pursue, and review our prior case results.
Economic Damages
Economic damages are those that are easier to put a price on because you have documentation of the loss. Some examples of this may include medical bills, lost time at work, and even modifications you have to make to your home or car because of your new injuries.
Economic damages should be easily used to prove that someone else is responsible for your losses.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages are those that are harder to put a value on because they can be less specific but are still very impactful. Some examples may include pain and suffering, emotional trauma, loss of quality of life, loss of ability to work at the same level, and loss of consortium.
These losses can be dramatically impactful to your future and need to be a part of your accident claim.
Punitive Damages
There are some situations in which a judge will believe that a person acted in malicious or reckless behavior that warrants a higher level of punishment and consequence. As such, they may award you punitive damages.
These damages are funds you can use to meet your needs and tend to be significant. Our slip and fall lawyer in Las Vegas will work closely with you to understand what your losses are in this area and, when possible, prove those losses in a court of law.
Las Vegas Slip and Fall Case: Holding a Casino Accountable for Negligence
In a recent case against a prominent Las Vegas casino, H&P Law successfully tackled complex liability issues and presented a rock-solid case backed by undeniable evidence, expert testimony, and persuasive legal arguments for a slip and fall accident that occurred at the entrance of the well-known establishment.
Here is What Happened
On a rainy spring afternoon, H&P’s client entered the casino, unaware of the dangerous conditions inside. As she stepped onto the smooth white marble flooring, it had become dangerously slick from rainwater tracked in from outside. Within seconds, she slipped and fell, suffering a severe knee fracture.
The evidence revealed that the casino was well aware of the hazards its marble floors presented when wet. Employees had noticed standing water on the entrance mat, but the only precaution taken was a single caution cone placed 15-20 feet away, facing the parking garage—far from the actual danger zone. No warning signs were positioned near the wet marble at the entrance, where the slip occurred.
Testimony from a maintenance employee confirmed that staff were required to use multiple caution cones when cleaning the same slippery marble floors, yet no similar precautions were taken that day. Despite knowledge of prior slip and fall incidents on the same flooring, the casino failed to take reasonable steps to ensure guest safety.
At the core of this case was H&P Accident & Injury Lawyers’ dedication to justice—not just for their client, but for every guest who expects businesses to maintain a safe environment.
By holding the casino accountable, our Las Vegas casino accident lawyer likely helped prevent further negligence. Ultimately, the casino agreed to a $125,000 settlement to compensate the client for her injuries, sending a clear message that safety must always come first.
Comparative Negligence in a Slip and Fall Case in Nevada
In some situations, a slip and fall accident could be partially your fault. As your slip and fall attorney in Las Vegas, we work to minimize the risk of any percentage of this case being considered your fault, but in some situations, that will occur. If it does, you need to understand Nevada’s slip and fall laws related to comparative negligence, meaning that more than one party is responsible for the injury.
In Nevada, you can file a claim for losses you suffered if you are no more than 50% at fault for the accident, according to NRS 41.141. This means that as long as the other party shares half the blame, you can pursue compensation for your losses. You can no longer seek compensation if you hold 51% of the blame.
This also means your compensation will be reduced by the percentage of fault you maintain. For example, if a judge determines you were 25% to blame, the judge will reduce your claim by 25%. Because this is so important to the outcome of your case, we strongly suggest allowing our legal team to guide you in recovering these losses.
Nevada Statute of Limitations for Slip and Fall Cases
In Nevada, a person suffering an injury due to a slip and fall accident has the right to pursue legal action against the at-fault party for the losses they incur. However, there is a limitation of two years in this case, as outlined in NRS 11.190(4)(e). That means you must file a claim within two years of the date of the accident in order for you to pursue compensation.
If you wait longer than two years, the court cannot force the insurance company or other at-fault party to pay the losses you incurred. That includes situations where it is very obvious who owes those losses. You do not wait to want.
Filing a claim with an insurance company may need to be done before this.
This statute of limitations applies to court action. In most cases, we want to make sure you receive compensation well before two years, so be sure to read our FAQs to learn more.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Settling Your Case Out of Court
Our attorneys want you to recover the most compensation owed to you. To do this, we will provide you with insight into whether you should settle your case out of court or pursue legal action in a court of law. Consider some of the advantages and disadvantages of each method.
The advantage of settling your case out of court is that there is less overall cost and more opportunity for you to get the funds quickly if all are in agreement. Lower costs can mean more money in your pocket. As long as a fair agreement is possible, this tends to be ideal.
When you are faced with an insurance company that does not agree to fair compensation or may even be blaming you, it is critical to consider going to court. It may help you document your losses and recover damages that are more than what the insurance company is willing to pay.
Let our Las Vegas slip and fall lawyer help you navigate these situations and learn more about H&P Law.
A Step-by-Step Look at the Slip and Fall Legal Process
If you are filing a slip and fall claim, it may feel unfamiliar at first. Breaking the process into stages shows you how cases like these usually develop and what you can expect going forward. While every case is different, most follow a similar progression from filing through resolution.
Filing the Claim and Starting the Investigation
Your case begins when the claim is filed and the insurance company is notified. From there, your Las Vegas slip and fall lawyer will gather incident reports, review available records, and begin planning our approach with you.
This early work reassures you that important details are being addressed from the start and helps you understand the stages of Nevada slip and fall accidents.
Discovery and Exchange of Evidence
During discovery, both sides exchange information. You may see records being reviewed and depositions being scheduled. Experts may also be brought in to evaluate the evidence and strengthen the case.
Under Nevada Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 16, these pretrial steps help organize the case so you know what is being presented.
Preparing for Mediation and Trial Readiness
As your case continues, we prepare for both settlement and trial. That includes lining up witnesses and preparing exhibits. We also anticipate defense arguments, so you know your case is ready for court even if settlement talks continue.
Our Experienced Slip and Fall Lawyers in Las Vegas Can Provide a Free Consultation
A slip and fall lawyer in Las Vegas is here to discuss your case with you during a free, no–obligation consultation. Reach out to us today to learn more about the legal rights you have to the compensation you deserve after this accident left you with numerous injuries and other losses.
Contact H&P Law now to talk to one of our team members about your accident and the legal options available to you.
