A police dog bites the wrong person in an apartment breezeway. A patrol car runs a red light on the way to a call and hits a driver on Charleston. A stolen Camry being chased up I-15 slams into a family at the Craig Road exit. All three are police injury claims in Nevada. All three are decided by different rules. That is why lawyers say these cases are fact dependent, and it is not a dodge. Which door you walk through decides who pays, how much, and how long you have.
This article walks through the three doors. It also covers the awkward question people are afraid to ask, which is what happens if you were the one running.
Two Legal Tracks Run Side by Side
Police injury claims can travel on one or both of two tracks. The first is Nevada negligence law. Under NRS 41.031 the State and every city and county have waived immunity and can be sued like a private party. That covers the agencies behind Metro, Henderson Police and North Las Vegas Police. That waiver comes with limits. NRS 41.032 blocks suits over discretionary decisions, and NRS 41.0336 blocks most claims that police simply failed to protect someone. Only conduct that affirmatively caused the harm gets through.
The state track also has a ceiling. NRS 41.035 caps a tort award against a public agency or its employees at a fixed amount per claimant, and it bars punitive damages entirely. For a serious injury that ceiling is often lower than the medical bills alone.
The second track is federal. 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 lets a person sue an officer who violated a constitutional right while acting under color of law. Excessive force during an arrest is a Fourth Amendment claim. The federal track has no Nevada damages cap. That is the practical reason police injury claims are usually pleaded on both tracks at once. Our overview of suing a police department for violating your rights covers the federal side in more depth.
Door One, the Police Dog
People start with the Nevada dog statute and hit a wall. NRS 202.500 defines dangerous and vicious dogs and makes certain conduct by an owner a crime, but it states that it does not apply to a dog used by a law enforcement officer in the performance of duty. Nevada also has no statute making dog owners strictly liable for a bite. An ordinary bite case runs on negligence, which our dog bite practice page explains.
A police dog case therefore runs on excessive force. The test comes from Graham v. Connor, a 1989 Supreme Court decision. Courts ask whether the force was objectively reasonable from the viewpoint of a reasonable officer on the scene, without hindsight. Three facts carry most of the weight, the severity of the suspected crime, whether the person posed an immediate threat, and whether the person was resisting or fleeing.
Apply that to a dog. A dog released on an unarmed person who is already on the ground looks very different from a dog sent after an armed suspect running through a dark yard. Duration matters too. A bite that continues after the person has surrendered is its own question, because the justification for force ends when resistance ends.
The bystander case is the strongest version. A person who was never a suspect, bitten because a dog found the wrong body in the dark, has a negligence claim on the state track and a federal claim if the deployment itself was unreasonable.
Door Two, Hit by a Police Car
Here the first question is what the officer was doing. Nevada gives emergency vehicles privileges under NRS 484B.700. An officer responding to an emergency call or pursuing a suspect may run a red light or exceed the speed limit. The privilege applies only while using lights and siren, or in some cases visual signals alone. Subsection 4 then takes back what people assume the statute gives. Those privileges do not relieve the driver from the duty to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons. They also do not protect the driver from the consequences of reckless disregard.
That sentence decided a Nevada case. In Glover-Armont v. Cargile, a 2018 Nevada Court of Appeals opinion, a North Las Vegas sergeant responding to a call turned left against a red light and hit another car. The city argued discretionary immunity under NRS 41.032. The court held that NRS 484B.700 imposes a mandatory duty, so immunity did not apply, and it sent the case back for trial. The lesson is simple. An emergency does not erase the duty of care. It changes what care looks like.
An officer on regular duty, with no lights and no emergency, who rear-ends you at a light on Sahara is an ordinary negligence defendant. The agency answers for the employee. The state cap still applies, and there is no federal claim for plain careless driving. A federal claim during a chase needs far more. In County of Sacramento v. Lewis, the Supreme Court held that a high speed pursuit violates due process only where the officer had a purpose to cause harm unrelated to the arrest. That is a rare fact pattern.
Door Three, Hit by the Suspect Being Chased
This is the door most people find locked, and it helps to know why in advance. The driver who hit you is the fleeing suspect. That person is fully liable. The agency chasing them usually is not. The decision to start or continue a pursuit is treated as discretionary. NRS 41.0336 then says a law enforcement agency is not liable for failing to protect the public unless an officer’s own conduct affirmatively caused the harm, or a specific promise was made and relied on.
So the practical claim is against the suspect and, more often, against your own policy. Fleeing drivers are frequently uninsured or driving a car that is not theirs. Nevada requires every insurer to offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage equal to your bodily injury limits under NRS 687B.145. The state minimum liability limits under NRS 485.185 are low, twenty five thousand per person and fifty thousand per crash. If you declined UM coverage to save a few dollars a month, this is the scenario where that decision bites. Our guide to suing an uninsured driver in Nevada explains the sequence.
There is an exception worth checking. If the officer’s own vehicle struck you, or an officer’s driving forced you into the crash, the analysis moves back to door two and the agency is in the case.
The Stolen Car Wrinkle
When the fleeing car was stolen, people assume the owner or the owner’s insurer will pay. Nevada law says otherwise. In Elliott v. Mallory Electric, decided by the Nevada Supreme Court in 1977, a luxury car left with the keys in it was stolen from a Reno casino driveway. The thief crashed into the plaintiff while fleeing the Highway Patrol. The court held the owner was not liable. An owner ordinarily owes no duty to a stranger injured by someone who steals the car. The court rejected the argument that the circumstances were special enough to change that.
On the insurance side, a thief is not a permissive driver, so the owner’s policy generally does not respond. The realistic sources of recovery are the thief, who rarely has assets, your UM and UIM coverage, and your medical payments coverage. That is why the first phone call after a stolen car crash should be to your own insurer, with a lawyer reviewing the policy language before anyone records a statement.
If You Were the One Running
Honesty here saves time. If you fled or resisted, three things change. First, the Graham factors tilt against you, because flight and resistance justify more force than compliance does. Second, a resisting arrest conviction matters. A federal case called Heck v. Humphrey bars a Section 1983 claim whose success would necessarily imply that the conviction is invalid. It does not bar every claim. Force used after resistance ended can still be litigated, and a case where the charge was dropped or dismissed sits differently. Third, Nevada’s comparative fault rule reduces what you recover by your own share of responsibility.
None of that means there is no case. It means the case has to be built around what happened after you stopped, and around the footage.
The Footage Has a Short Life
Nevada requires uniformed officers who routinely interact with the public to wear body cameras under NRS 289.830. The statute sets a minimum retention period of only fifteen days for routine recordings. Footage tied to a use of force or an arrest is usually kept longer under agency policy, but the statute floor is the number to plan around. Recordings are public records, requested per incident, and the agency must respond to a records request within five business days under NRS 239.0107.
A preservation letter should go to the agency within days. It should name the date, the location, the officers if known, and the dog if one was used. It should ask that body camera, dash camera and dispatch audio be held. Traffic and business cameras near the scene overwrite themselves on their own schedules and should be asked for the same week.
Deadlines on Both Tracks
The Nevada personal injury deadline is two years under NRS 11.190. Federal courts borrow that same two year period for Section 1983 claims in Nevada, a rule the Ninth Circuit confirmed in Perez v. Seevers. Nevada also has a claim procedure under NRS 41.036. It is a filing with the Attorney General for state claims, or with the city or county for local claims, within two years. The statute says that filing is not a condition of suing, but it is a step a careful lawyer takes early.
Two years sounds generous. The evidence in these cases does not last two years. That is the gap the deadline hides.
What to Do This Week
- Get the injury treated and documented. Dog bites need wound photographs on day one and again as they heal.
- Write down what the officers said and did, in order, while it is fresh.
- Request the body camera footage for the incident under NRS 289.830 and send a preservation letter.
- Collect names of anyone who saw it. In a pursuit crash that includes the other drivers who stopped.
- Do not give a recorded statement to any insurer, including your own, before a lawyer has read the policy.
- If charges are pending, tell your criminal defense lawyer that a civil claim is coming. The two cases affect each other.
The car accident side of these claims follows the same rules as any Nevada crash once the right defendant is identified. Whether a government agency can be that defendant at all is the question our page on suing a local government for negligence answers. Police injury claims are the sharpest version of it.
Bring Us the Report and the Footage Request
Police injury claims in Nevada reward speed and precision more than almost any other kind of case. The first conversation with us costs nothing. Bring the incident number, any citation or charge, and your insurance declarations page. Bring whatever footage or photographs you already have. We will tell you which door you are standing in front of and what is behind it. Contact The Bourassa Law Group for a free consultation.
1-800-870-8910