Nevada Personal Injury Lawyer

A personal injury can happen in a matter of seconds, but it might affect your life for weeks, months, or even permanently. Afterward, you could have medical bills, lost income, pain, repair costs, and more losses.

But if the negligence of another caused your injury, you shouldn’t have to deal with the costs on your own.

Get Help From a Nevada Personal Injury Attorney Today

Sometimes, people are hesitant to consult a lawyer after an accident or injury. They may not want to sue anyone, they might think the accident is their fault, or they could have concerns about cost.

Fortunately, none of these reasons should prevent you from seeking legal advice after an injury.

The CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm is always available for a free consultation about your injury. If you aren’t sure whether you need a lawyer or have a personal injury case, you can find out at no cost.

We’ll review the details of your accident or injury, answer your questions, and explain your options so that you can make an informed decision. There is no obligation, and your consultation is confidential.

Additionally, not all cases require a lawsuit. In some situations, we can help you file a claim with a relevant insurance policy or negotiate a settlement with the negligent party. We’ll always try to find a solution that meets your needs while allowing you to recover your damages.

What Kinds of Situations Lead to a Personal Injury Case?

A personal injury occurs due to the fault of another party; if you trip over your own feet and break your arm, that’s unfortunate, but it’s not a personal injury. However, if you trip on a loose floor tile on someone else’s property, that could be a personal injury if the property owner was negligent.

Negligence is the most common reason for the other party to be at fault, but in some situations, personal injuries involve intentional acts or strict liability.

There is no rule that personal injuries can only happen in specific situations. If another party is at fault for your injury, and we can find evidence that they were negligent, strictly liable, or intentionally hurt you, then you could have a personal injury claim.

However, there are many categories of personal injuries that we see frequently in our practice:

Car or Motor Vehicle Accidents

Motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause of death and injury in the US. Most involve a collision between two vehicles, but we also see cases of cars striking pedestrians or bicyclists and sometimes single-vehicle accidents.

Vehicles may include cars, large trucks, buses, motorcycles, and other vehicles that commonly travel on the street—in some localities, this may include golf carts on certain roads.

Nevada is a fault state for accidents, which means the at-fault party is considered responsible for damages. Typically, these damages are paid by the at-fault driver’s car insurance up to their policy limit.

The state requires $25,000 per person in bodily injury liability insurance, up to $50,000 per accident, and $20,000 in property damage liability, but you can buy more coverage. In some particularly serious accidents, the injured party’s damages may exceed these limits, in which case we will consider other options to recover their remaining damages.

Shared or comparative fault is also a concern in car accidents and sometimes other personal injury situations. Fault does not always belong entirely to one person—there are many situations where both drivers contributed to a collision.

Sometimes, we meet clients who believe they are totally at fault because they made a mistake right before the accident. But often, we find that the other driver also took actions that caused the accident.

What happens in these cases? It’s still possible to collect damages as long as you were less at fault than the other driver (specifically, less than 50 percent responsible).

Your own percentage of fault will be subtracted from your total damages, so if you were 20 percent at fault, you would lose 20 percent of your settlement.

Yet many injured people run into difficulties when it comes to comparative fault and the insurance company. The other driver’s insurance carrier will want to pay as little as possible—preferably nothing, if they think they can manage it.

What often happens is that the insurance carrier overestimates the injured person’s percentage of fault, so they can pay less or nothing at all. Your lawyer will investigate the accident, gather evidence, and establish a strategy to demonstrate why you had no or very little culpability in the accident.

We can then negotiate with the insurance carrier for a more equitable settlement.

Golf Carts and ATVs

Golf carts provide an easy way to get around in many situations where a car is not appropriate, such as on a golf course or at some events or outdoor venues. In Nevada, it’s legal to drive a golf cart on residential roads if the local government permits it, but you should check your local ordinances first.

Larger counties require a DMV permit and insurance to drive a golf cart on residential streets. ATVs and other OHVs (off-highway vehicles) cannot be driven on streets as they are intended for off-highway use.

Whether the golf cart is driven on the road or off, injuries associated with golf carts are common, especially among children. One issue is that the boxy, top-heavy design of golf carts makes them easy to flip, especially when going around curves too fast.

We also see cases where an intoxicated golf cart driver collided with a pedestrian, building, other objects, or another golf cart. As a reminder, you can get a DUI in Nevada while driving a golf cart, even on private property like a golf course, as long as the public has access to the location.

However, there are other ways to be injured on a golf cart. Injuries frequently occur when a passenger dangles their foot or arm outside the cart and it hits or gets caught on another object.

Always keep your limbs inside the golf cart—the driver may have no idea that your foot is hanging off the other side of the cart and in danger of slamming into a table, tree, or building.

If you’ve been injured in a golf cart accident, there are a number of parties who might be liable, and it can be challenging to identify the party or parties who were at fault. These could include:

• The golf cart’s driver or operator. If they were driving recklessly and hit you or caused an accident that injured you, the driver might be at fault.
• The golf cart’s owner. This isn’t always the person who was driving the cart at the time of the accident. If the owner allowed someone else to use the golf cart, they could be liable in some situations. For instance, if the driver was drunk or a child or teen who didn’t know how to drive the cart safely, the owner might be at fault. Or, if the cart had not been maintained properly and suffered a malfunction that caused the accident, the owner might also be responsible.
• The property owner. If your accident was due to an unaddressed hazard on the property, the property owner might be liable.
• The golf cart manufacturer or a service company that worked on it. If the golf cart was made with a defect that caused your accident, you may have a case against the manufacturer. Or, if a company that serviced the golf cart installed a part incorrectly or otherwise caused the malfunction, they might be liable. However, it will be important to establish the third party was responsible for the malfunction rather than the owner’s lack of regular maintenance.

As you can probably see, determining fault in an ATV or golf cart accident can be difficult to do on your own. An experienced personal injury attorney will be able to help you figure out how your accident happened and who might be responsible.

Defective Products

We discussed defective golf carts or components in the last section, but almost any product can be defective. A defective airbag in your car, for instance, could cause you severe injuries instead of preventing them.

Meanwhile, a defective appliance could start a fire in your home, leading to injuries and property damage.

Medications and medical devices also make up a significant portion of defective product claims. Although every drug has side effects, you can still pursue a claim against a drug or device manufacturer if their product is unreasonably dangerous.

This might happen when the risks are particularly dangerous, and there are safer alternatives (a design defect), or if the manufacturer fails to warn patients about potentially serious side effects. Sometimes, the drug isn’t inherently dangerous, but a temporary production problem causes some batches to become contaminated with other drugs, bacteria, pieces of metal, etc.

Toys or children’s products can also be defective. Sometimes the item is contaminated with lead or other toxins that could harm a child. In other cases, the item might collapse or move in a way that could injure children.

It’s not always obvious that a product is defective, even to a consumer who has been harmed by the product. Here are some signs of a potentially defective product:

• When your accident or injury occurred, you noticed the product responded or behaved in a way it normally doesn’t. For instance, if you started the blender and the lid flew off and hit you in the face, even though you had closed it securely, the blender could be defective.
• The product packaging states that it’s “new and improved,” which usually indicates a design change. That doesn’t necessarily mean the new design is defective, of course, but if the design changes and you experience an injury from the product, it’s possible a defect is to blame.
• You’re puzzled about how your accident happened. Sometimes, we understand why an accident or injury occurred, even if we didn’t realize it at the time. But in other cases,  you may struggle to ascertain what happened. You did the same thing in the same way but got a very different result that caused you to be injured. If this happens, please save the product in its current state and speak to an attorney right away.
• You experience new symptoms after starting a new medication or using a medical device. Even if these symptoms seem mild or inconsequential at first, you should take them seriously—talk with your pharmacist or doctor to ensure they aren’t indicative of a more serious problem. It’s also helpful to keep a diary of how you feel so you can track your symptoms and their severity. If you experience a severe or life-threatening medical condition while taking any medication, consult the drug facts to see if your condition is listed as a potential side effect. Even if it isn’t, it’s still possible the medication could have caused your health issue, and you should consider seeking legal advice.

Nevada has strict liability for product manufacturers, so it is not necessary to prove the manufacturer, distributor, or retailer was negligent. You will have to prove that the product was defective, that its defect caused your injuries, and that it was in this defective state when it left the defendant’s control.

Medical Malpractice

Healthcare providers have a responsibility to care for patients to the best of their ability, in keeping with the standards of their profession. Experiencing a poor outcome from your treatment does not necessarily mean your provider was negligent or didn’t live up to their professional standards.

However, you may have experienced medical neglect if you notice any of the following issues:

• It took months or even years to get a diagnosis, even though you repeatedly went to the doctor about your symptoms.
• A delayed diagnosis led to your condition worsening and made treatment more difficult or a cure impossible. For instance, most forms of cancer can be treated or even cured if caught early enough but may be incurable once the cancer has spread. If your doctor brushed off your symptoms as “stress,” “anxiety,” or any relatively harmless condition for an extended period, they might have cost you time in treating the illness.
• You experienced chronic pain or other new symptoms after an operation, and your doctor could offer no satisfactory explanation why.
• You learned that an instrument or other foreign object had been left inside you during surgery.
• Your doctor prescribed an aggressive treatment for a relatively minor and benign condition and insisted more moderate treatments wouldn’t work.
• Your doctor diagnosed a condition and prescribed a treatment that did not resolve your symptoms. When you reported the lack of improvement, they brushed off your concerns and made no effort to find another solution.
• You developed a severe side effect from a medication or medical device and later learned the product was contraindicated for patients with your medical history. In this case, the issue is not with a defective product—the manufacturer warned that certain patients should not use their medication. Most patients won’t read every word of the information that comes with the medication, or they may not understand all the medical jargon if they do read it, so the prescriber and/or pharmacist has a responsibility to screen the patient for indicators that the medication would be dangerous.

In Nevada, medical malpractice cases are called “professional negligence” claims. When you file a professional negligence claim, you must submit an affidavit from a medical professional in the same or a similar specialty as your provider.

This affidavit should clearly lay out why the provider’s actions caused your injury, as opposed to you suffering a poor outcome as a natural and unavoidable consequence of your illness or injury.

If you suspect you suffered professional negligence by your provider, don’t confront them. Instead, obtain copies of your medical records and ask an experienced personal injury attorney to review them.

When we believe there is evidence of negligence, we will contact a medical expert to review your case independently. If they agree that the provider was negligent, they can provide the affidavit needed to begin your claim.

Premises Liability

A premises liability case is based on an injury that happens on another party’s property due to the owner’s negligence. These cases can occur in a wide variety of ways, including the following:

• Slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall accidents. Unfortunately, falls are the leading cause of injury in older adults (65+) and the second most common cause of unintentional injury deaths worldwide. They’re also a frequent cause of Workers’ Compensation claims. Not all falls are caused by someone else’s negligence, but if the property owner failed to address a hazard—such as cleaning up a puddle or removing debris—they might be negligent.
• Other hazards. These might include unsafe situations that cause fires, electrocution, being struck by falling objects, or poisoning. Some everyday objects or features are not unsafe for everyone but could be dangerous to small children or other groups, so it’s important for property owners to take reasonable steps to ensure safety. For instance, hotel pools are usually fenced off and require a keycard to open the gate so that young children can’t wander over to the pool and fall in.
• Inadequate security. Stores and other organizations that are open to the public have a duty to keep the premises relatively safe for their customers. If you are injured in the course of a criminal act—for example, if a robber hits you in the head at your local grocery store—it’s possible the store did not make a reasonable effort to maintain a safe environment. For example, if we investigate and discover that several other robberies occurred at the same store previously, but the owners did nothing to improve their security practices, they might be liable. Other issues might include poor lighting in the parking lot or a lack of cameras or alarm systems in a high-crime area.
• Sporting or outdoor activities. Often, when you rent equipment for outdoor activities, such as an RV or a kayak, the property owner will ask you to sign a release stating they are not liable for your injuries, but this is not enforceable in all situations. If you were injured because you operated the equipment recklessly, then it’s true the owner should not be liable for your injuries. However, if you were hurt because the owner failed to fix or warn you about a hazard on their property, then you could still have a case in spite of the release.
• Construction site negligence. If you are walking and trip over a sidewalk that’s in the process of being renovated, the company or organization performing repairs might have been negligent. These incidents aren’t limited to tripping or slipping, either. Construction crew managers have a responsibility to ensure the public is protected from or warned about hazards like heavy equipment, tools lying around, pieces of debris that may fall from a building being remodeled, etc. If you ignore warning cones or signs telling you to stay out of an area under construction, that’s not the construction crew’s fault, but if there is no appropriate warning, then it’s possible they might be negligent.

How Can You Learn More From a Nevada Personal Injury Law Firm?

If you or a loved one have been injured, it’s not always easy to know if you were hurt due to negligence or an unavoidable accident. The CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm is available to evaluate your case for free.

We’ll learn about what happened, answer your questions, and describe your options for recovering compensation. If you want to move forward with us, we won’t charge you anything until we win or settle the case.

Attorney Ali Awad founded the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm only a few short years ago and has turned it into one of the fastest-growing law firms in the country. With more than twenty years of combined experience, he and his team have recovered millions of dollars for injured people and their families.

When he’s not hard at work on a case, Mr. Awad helps educate the public about legal issues by posting videos for more than a million followers on social media. You can work with him today when you call (833) 254-2923.