A revolving door at a Strip resort turns thousands of times a day. An automatic sliding door at a grocery store on Rainbow opens and closes every few seconds through a Saturday rush. Nobody thinks about either one until a revolving wing speeds up and clips somebody’s heel, a sliding panel closes on a shopper’s shoulder, or a swinging power door catches a child walking a half step behind a parent.
These injuries read as minor in the incident report and rarely stay minor. An older guest knocked off balance by a revolving wing fractures a hip on terrazzo. A person shoved forward at the exit point takes a head strike on the threshold. Fingers get pinched in the gap between a moving wing and the drum wall. Meanwhile the property responds the same way every time, with a one page incident form, a courtesy apology, and a call from a claims adjuster within the week asking for a recorded statement while you are still on pain medication.
What follows is a plain explanation of how Nevada law treats door injuries in hotels, casinos, malls and retail stores, who can be held responsible, what the door was supposed to do before it hurt you, and why the proof that decides these claims tends to disappear inside of a month.
Why Door Injuries Happen More Often Than People Assume
A modern entrance is a machine. A power operated sliding or swinging door depends on presence sensors that hold the door open while somebody is still in the path, motion sensors that trigger the opening cycle, and a motor with a controlled opening and closing speed. A revolving door adds rotation speed control, sensors along the forward edge of each wing, sensors at the entry and exit throats, and wings that are supposed to fold flat under hand pressure so the opening can be used as an exit in an emergency.
Each of those parts drifts out of adjustment with use. Sensor heads get bumped by luggage carts or covered with dust from a nearby renovation. Sensitivity settings get dialed down because a false trigger was holding a door open and letting conditioned air escape. A speed setting gets raised so a busy lobby moves people faster. Safety mats age and stop registering light weight. A drum gasket wears down and the gap between wing and wall widens. None of that is visible to a guest walking in from the porte cochere carrying a suitcase.
The pattern that shows up again and again in Las Vegas cases is a door that had been acting up for a while. Housekeeping noticed it. A bell captain mentioned it. Somebody put in a work order. The service company was scheduled to come out the following week. The injury happened in the gap between the complaint and the repair, and that gap is exactly what a Nevada negligence case is built on.
What an Automatic or Revolving Door Is Supposed to Do
Doors of this type are governed by written performance standards, and knowing those standards is what separates a serious claim from a shrug. Clark County has adopted the 2018 International Building Code, along with the Southern Nevada Amendments, as its building code under Title 22 of the county code. Under Section 1010.3.1 of that code, a revolving door must be capable of collapsing when a force of not more than 130 pounds is applied within three inches of the outer edge of a wing. A revolving door that is not part of a means of egress has a breakout force limit of 180 pounds, and a higher force is allowed only if the force drops to no more than 130 pounds on a power failure, a sprinkler activation, a smoke detection activation, or the throw of a clearly identified manual control switch. The same section requires revolving doors to comply with the industry standard BHMA A156.27 and to be installed according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
That industry standard, ANSI/BHMA A156.27, covers power operated and manual revolving pedestrian doors and sets specifications for maximum speed, safe egress in an emergency, signage, and the sensors meant to detect people and objects so a user is not struck or trapped. Power operated sliding and swinging pedestrian doors are addressed by ANSI/BHMA A156.10, and lower energy power operated doors by ANSI/BHMA A156.19.
Federal accessibility rules matter too. Under the ADA Standards for Accessible Design, revolving doors, revolving gates and turnstiles are not permitted to be part of an accessible route, which is why a resort with a revolving entrance is also supposed to offer a usable adjacent door. The standards also require automatic and power assisted doors to comply with the ANSI/BHMA standards referenced above. You can read the rules the federal United States Access Board publishes for accessible doors and entrances.
The Nevada Rule That Actually Decides Your Claim
A hotel guest, a shopper and a convention attendee are all invitees. A property owner in Nevada owes an invitee reasonable care in keeping the premises reasonably safe. When the hazard is a foreign substance on a floor, Nevada courts ask a familiar question. In Sprague v. Lucky Stores, the Nevada Supreme Court held that where the business or its own employees caused the substance to be on the floor, liability follows, because a foreign substance on the floor is usually not consistent with ordinary care. Where somebody else caused it, the business is liable only if it had actual or constructive notice of the condition and failed to fix it.
A malfunctioning door is a different animal, and the difference usually helps the injured person. The door is the property’s own equipment. It was chosen, installed, powered, adjusted and maintained by the property or by a contractor the property hired. Notice is far easier to establish through maintenance logs, work orders, service tickets and prior incident reports than it is through a stray grape in a produce aisle.
The property will often argue that the danger was open and obvious. That argument carries less weight in Nevada than defendants would like. In Foster v. Costco Wholesale Corp., the Nevada Supreme Court held that the open and obvious nature of a hazard bears on whether the landowner exercised reasonable care, but it does not end the case, and summary judgment on that basis was reversed. The jury still gets to weigh whether the business acted reasonably.
One statute gets miscited in these cases constantly. NRS 651.015 addresses the civil liability of an innkeeper for death or injury caused by another person who is not an employee under the innkeeper’s control, and it turns on foreseeability and prior similar incidents. That statute is the negligent security framework. It is not the standard for a door that malfunctioned, which is ordinary premises negligence and, where the equipment itself is faulty, product liability. If an adjuster starts quoting foreseeability language from the innkeeper statute at you after a mechanical injury, that is a sign the file is being handled by someone working from the wrong template. Our overview of premises liability claims in Nevada walks through how these duties are sorted out.
When the Door Itself Is the Problem
The hotel or store is rarely the only party worth examining. A door system reaches a lobby through a chain of companies, and more than one of them can be legally responsible for the same injury.
- The manufacturer of the operator, sensors or revolving assembly, if the product was defectively designed or manufactured, or shipped without adequate warnings or instructions. Nevada recognizes strict liability claims against manufacturers and sellers of defective products.
- The installer, if sensor placement, mounting height, threshold clearance or commissioning fell short of the manufacturer’s instructions.
- The service contractor that holds the maintenance agreement, if scheduled inspections were skipped, safety checks were signed off without being performed, or a known fault was left in service.
- The property manager or tenant that controls the entrance under a lease, which is common in mall and mixed use settings where the anchor tenant, the landlord and a management company all touch the same doorway.
Sorting out which of them is on the hook is not something you can do from an incident report. It takes the maintenance contract, the service history, the manufacturer’s installation manual and, in many cases, a look at the actual sensor settings before anyone resets them.
Codes and Standards Are Evidence, Not an Automatic Win
A code or standards violation does not by itself hand you a verdict in Nevada. What it does is give a jury a concrete, published benchmark that the property either met or did not meet. A revolving door that took 200 pounds of force to collapse, or a sliding door whose presence sensor had been disabled, is no longer a matter of opinion once the number is on the page next to the code requirement. The same logic applies to the manufacturer’s own maintenance schedule, which frequently calls for safety checks at intervals the property has quietly stopped honoring.
The opposite is also true. Full compliance with a code does not automatically clear a business either, because the general duty of reasonable care still applies to how the entrance was operated on the day you were hurt.
The Evidence That Disappears Within Weeks
Casinos, resorts and large retailers run camera systems that overwrite themselves on a cycle measured in days or weeks, not years. The clip that shows the wing accelerating, or the door closing on you without pausing, is often the single most valuable item in the file, and nobody is obligated to keep it unless a preservation demand goes out in time. We have written before about how surveillance footage decides Nevada premises cases, and door claims are the clearest example of it.
Beyond video, the items worth demanding early are the incident report and any internal risk management notes, the maintenance and service history for that specific door, work orders and guest complaints for the preceding year, sensor and speed configuration records, the manufacturer and model information, the name of the service vendor, and the identities of any employee who responded. If the door is repaired or replaced before it has been inspected, a real piece of proof is gone. Rules on the loss of evidence exist in Nevada, but relying on them is a much weaker position than simply getting a letter out before the parts are swapped.
Injuries at large public venues raise the same preservation problem in a slightly different form, which is why we cover liability for injuries at Las Vegas conventions and trade shows separately. Head injuries from a fall at an entrance deserve their own attention as well, and our page on traumatic brain injury claims explains why symptoms that seem mild in the first week can matter enormously later.
Shared Fault, the Deadline and What a Claim Covers
Nevada applies modified comparative negligence under NRS 41.141. If you are found partly at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, and if your share exceeds the combined fault of the defendants you recover nothing. Expect the defense to argue that you were looking at your phone, that you pushed against the wing, that you were carrying too much, or that you had been drinking. Those arguments are about shifting percentages, not about ending the case.
The filing deadline for a personal injury action in Nevada is two years under NRS 11.190(4)(e). If the entrance belongs to a government body rather than a private business, a separate set of rules applies, including the claim filing provisions of NRS 41.036 and the damages limit in NRS 41.035, which caps a tort award against the State or a political subdivision at $200,000 per claimant, exclusive of interest, and bars punitive damages. Falls at a private casino entrance and falls at a public building are not the same case.
Recoverable losses generally include past and future medical care, lost wages and lost earning capacity, and pain and suffering. We do not publish predicted values, and neither should anyone else, because the number in any given case depends on the injury, the treatment, the fault split and the proof. For a sense of how these claims are put together, our guide to slip and fall claims in Las Vegas covers the same building blocks.
Talking to a Nevada Injury Lawyer About a Door Claim
If an automatic or revolving door injured you at a hotel, casino, mall or store in Southern Nevada, The Bourassa Law Group offers a free consultation to review what happened, identify who controlled and serviced the door, and get preservation demands out before the footage and the service records cycle away. There is no cost to talk it through, and no obligation.
This article is general information about Nevada law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney client relationship. Every case turns on its own facts, so speak with a licensed Nevada attorney about your specific situation.
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