You applied at a staffing agency somewhere in the Las Vegas valley. The agency ran your paperwork, put you on its payroll and sent you out to a warehouse in the southwest, a distribution center off Losee Road, a hotel laundry, a casino kitchen or a fabrication shop in Sparks. The people who told you where to stand, what to lift and how fast the line was moving did not work for the agency. They worked for the company that ordered the labor.
Then something went wrong. A pallet came down off a rack. A machine cycled while your hand was still inside it. A forklift backed into an aisle nobody had coned off. Now you are hurt, two different companies have your name in their files, and each one has an incentive to point across the room at the other.
Nevada law has answers here, and they are more specific than most placed workers expect. This article explains who counts as your employer, what the workers compensation system will and will not let you do about the injury, and where a separate claim against a different company can sit alongside the compensation claim without cancelling it.
Two Employers, One Injury, and Why That Matters
The arrangement that put you on that floor usually involves at least three parties. There is you. There is the agency that hired you, pays you and carries the industrial insurance. There is the host business, often called the client company, that controls the actual work.
That split is the whole problem. Workers compensation is a trade. You give up the right to sue your employer for negligence, and in exchange you receive medical care and wage benefits without proving fault. The trade only makes sense if you know which company is on the other side of it. When two businesses share the functions of an employer, the answer stops being obvious, and the answer decides whether a particular company can be sued at all.
The short version is that the protection an employer receives is neither automatic nor unlimited. It depends on statutes that spell out who is deemed an employer, who is deemed an employee, and who falls outside the arrangement entirely.
The Exclusive Remedy Rule and Who It Protects
NRS 616A.020 sets the rule. The rights and remedies provided in chapters 616A to 616D of NRS for an employee on account of an injury by accident sustained arising out of and in the course of the employment are exclusive of all other rights and remedies of the employee, at common law or otherwise, on account of that injury. The terms and provisions for the payment of compensation are conclusive, compulsory and obligatory upon both employers and employees who come within those chapters.
NRS 616B.612 completes the bargain from the other direction. Every employer within those chapters must provide and secure compensation for any personal injuries by accident sustained by an employee arising out of and in the course of the employment, and in such cases the employer and the employer’s insurer are relieved from other liability for recovery of damages for those injuries unless the chapters provide otherwise. That same section treats travel for which an employee receives wages as being in the course of employment.
A second layer matters on construction and multi trade sites. Under NRS 616A.210, and except as otherwise provided in NRS 616B.603, subcontractors, independent contractors and the employees of either are deemed to be employees of the principal contractor for purposes of the industrial insurance chapters. That is why an injured subcontractor employee often cannot bring an ordinary negligence suit against the general contractor. The same section adds that it does not affect the relationship between a principal contractor and a subcontractor for any purpose outside the scope of those chapters.
NRS 616B.603 is the exception that keeps the deeming rule from swallowing everything. A person is not an employer under these chapters if that person enters into a contract with another person or business which is an independent enterprise and the person is not in the same trade, business, profession or occupation as the independent enterprise. An independent enterprise means a person who holds himself or herself out as being engaged in a separate business and either holds a business or occupational license in his or her own name or owns, rents or leases property used in furtherance of the business. The section does not apply to a principal contractor licensed under chapter 624 of NRS or to a real estate broker with an associated salesperson.
Read those provisions together and a pattern appears. Whether the company that directed your work is shielded is a factual question about contracts, trades and who actually secured coverage. It is not a label anyone gets to assign after the fact.
How Nevada Law Treats Leased and Placed Workers
Nevada regulates employee leasing separately, and the definitions are narrower than most people assume. Under NRS 616B.670, an employee leasing company is a company which, under a written or oral agreement intended by the parties to create an ongoing relationship, places any of the regular full time employees of a client company on its payroll and, for a fee, leases them to the client company. A client company is the company that leases those employees for a fee. An ongoing relationship means the rights, duties and obligations of an employer are allocated between the two businesses on an ongoing, long term basis, and the statute expressly says the term does not include a temporary or project specific agreement between an employee leasing company and a client company.
That last sentence does real work. A classic temp placement, where an agency sends you out for a two week assignment or a single project, does not fit the statutory definition of employee leasing. A long running arrangement in which an existing workforce was moved onto a leasing company payroll does. The two can look identical from the floor and are treated differently on paper.
NRS 616B.673 requires a certificate of registration from the Administrator before anyone operates an employee leasing company in this State. Operating without one is a misdemeanor, and each certificate expires one year after it is issued unless renewed. NRS 616B.691 then divides responsibility between the two businesses. The client company is deemed the employer of the leased employees for purposes of chapter 612 of NRS, which is the unemployment compensation chapter. The leasing company is deemed an employer for purposes of offering, sponsoring and maintaining benefit plans, and that provision expressly does not affect the employer and employee relationship that exists between a leased employee and a client company. A leasing company may not act as a self insured employer or maintain a self funded insurance program for leased employees. If the leasing company fails to pay contributions, premiums, forfeits or interest, the client company is jointly and severally liable for the amounts attributable to the wages of the employees leased to it.
NRS 616B.697 adds a remedy that rarely gets mentioned. An action for damages caused by an employee leasing company’s failure to comply with NRS 616B.670 to 616B.697 may be brought against any person who is required to sign the application for that company’s certificate of registration.
If you want the plain statutory language for the deeming rule that starts all of this, the text of NRS 616A.210 on subcontractors and employees takes about a minute to read. Workers caught between overlapping employers also run into the classification questions covered in our article on co employment lawsuits.
Reporting the Injury When You Are Not Sure Who Your Employer Is
The reporting rules do not wait for anyone to sort out the corporate structure, and missing them causes more denied claims than any legal argument ever does.
NRS 616C.015 requires an employee, or a dependent if the employee has died, to provide written notice of an injury that arose out of and in the course of employment to the employer as soon as practicable, but within seven days after the accident. The notice goes on a form prescribed by the Administrator, must be signed, must include an explanation of the procedure for filing a claim for compensation, and must be prepared in duplicate so both sides keep a copy. When the employer, the injured employee’s supervisor or the employer’s agent signs it, that signature acknowledges receipt and is not a waiver of any of the employer’s defenses or rights. Employers retain the notice for three years, and an employer insured by a private carrier does not file the notice with the carrier.
That same statute contains the provision placed workers should know by heart. The claim of a leased employee is not barred if the leased employee gives notice to his or her client company supervisor rather than to the leasing company supervisor, and notification of an injury to the client company supervisor is deemed sufficient notice of injury to the employer.
NRS 616C.020 sets the next deadline. An injured employee, or a person acting on the employee’s behalf, must file a claim for compensation with the insurer within 90 days after an accident if the employee sought medical treatment for a work injury or was off work as a result of one. Where the injured employee has died from the injury, a dependent has one year after the death. NRS 616C.040 puts a parallel duty on the treating physician or chiropractor, who must complete and file a claim for compensation with the employer and the employer’s insurer within three working days after first providing treatment for the injury.
The practical instruction is simple. Report in writing to the agency and to the host company on the same day, keep copies of both, and tell the treating provider the injury happened at work and name both companies.
The Third Party Claim, Where the Real Recovery Often Sits
Exclusive remedy closes one door. It does not close the building. NRS 616C.215 addresses an injury that is compensable under the industrial insurance chapters and was caused under circumstances creating a legal liability in some person, other than the employer or a person in the same employ, to pay damages. In that situation the injured employee, or the dependents in a death case, may take proceedings against that person to recover damages.
On a staffing placement, the list of candidates is often longer than on a conventional job. Depending on the facts it can include a machine or equipment manufacturer, a maintenance or repair contractor that serviced the equipment, another trade contractor working the same site, a property owner or landlord with retained control, a trucking or delivery company operating in the area where you were assigned, or a separate business whose employee caused the incident. Which of those actually exist is a question of documents and site conditions, never an assumption. Our discussion of third party injury claims for Nevada construction workers walks through how those defendants get identified.
The statute also sets the accounting. Compensation the injured employee is entitled to receive, including future compensation, must be reduced by the amount of damages recovered. The insurer, or the Administrator on claims involving the Uninsured Employers’ Claim Account, has a right of action against the person liable, is subrogated to the employee’s rights, and holds a lien on the total proceeds of any recovery whether those proceeds come by way of judgment, settlement or otherwise. Injured workers are not entitled to double recovery for the same injury.
Two procedural requirements inside that section deserve attention because they carry personal consequences. The injured employee, the dependents, or the attorney or representative must notify the insurer in writing before initiating a proceeding or action. Within 15 days after the date of recovery by actual receipt of the proceeds of a judgment or settlement, the claimant side and the third party insurer must notify the insurer of the recovery, pay the amount due and provide an itemized statement showing the distribution of the total recovery. The attorney or representative and the third party insurer are jointly and severally liable for amounts owed if they had knowledge of the lien.
At trial the jury receives proof of the amounts paid by the compensation insurer, along with an instruction that those payments were made because a compensable industrial accident occurred and do not depend on blame or fault, and that the jury should find damages without deducting compensation benefits because the law provides a means by which those benefits will be repaid from the award.
When Nobody Carried Coverage
Sometimes the discovery is that no one secured industrial insurance for you at all. NRS 616C.220 creates a path through the Uninsured Employers’ Claim Account. An employee may receive compensation from that account if the employee was hired in this State or is regularly employed in this State, suffers an accident or injury arising out of and in the course of employment in this State or while on temporary assignment outside the State for not more than 12 months, files a claim for compensation with the Division, and makes an irrevocable assignment to the Division of the right to be subrogated to the employee’s rights under NRS 616C.215.
The burden then shifts in a way that helps the worker. For purposes of that section the employer carries the burden of proving that it provided mandatory industrial insurance coverage or that it was not required to maintain coverage. Any employer that failed to provide mandatory coverage is liable for all payments made on its behalf, including benefits, administrative costs and attorney fees, and the Division may recover that money by civil action, with interest running until the account is repaid. Employers that cut corners on coverage tend to cut them elsewhere as well, which is part of why we wrote about the tactics employers use to avoid liability in workplace injury cases.
Deadlines, Fault and What to Preserve
The compensation deadlines described above are short and run from the accident. The deadline for a claim against a third party is different. Under NRS 11.190(4)(e), an action to recover damages for injuries to a person or for the death of a person caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another must be commenced within two years.
Fault matters in the third party case even though it does not matter in the compensation claim. NRS 41.141 provides that comparative negligence does not bar recovery if the injured person’s negligence was not greater than the negligence of the parties against whom recovery is sought. The judge instructs the jury that the plaintiff may not recover if the plaintiff’s share is greater than the defendant’s negligence or the combined negligence of multiple defendants, and the jury returns a special verdict indicating the percentage attributable to each party. Defendants are generally severally liable for their own percentage, with listed exceptions that include strict liability, intentional torts, concerted acts and injury resulting from a product manufactured, distributed, sold or used in this State.
What preserves a case is evidence gathered early. Photograph the equipment and the area before anything is repaired. Write down the name of every company whose people were working nearby. Keep the assignment paperwork, the badge, the timesheets and any text messages from a dispatcher. Ask for the incident report in writing. If the host company gave a safety orientation, note who gave it and what it covered. Those are the documents that later tell a court which company controlled the hazard, the same question at the center of unsafe working conditions claims in Nevada.
Talking to The Bourassa Law Group About a Staffing Placement Injury
If a staffing agency placed you and you were hurt at the company where you were sent, The Bourassa Law Group offers a free consultation to review the placement paperwork, the coverage situation and whether a claim exists against anyone other than the employer. Because the notice and filing deadlines inside the compensation system run in days and weeks rather than years, an early conversation is worth having even while you are still treating.
This article is general information about Nevada law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney client relationship, and every claim turns on its own facts, contracts and medical proof. Speak with a licensed Nevada attorney about your situation, or read more about Nevada personal injury representation.
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