Property owners in Nevada have a legal duty to keep their premises reasonably safe for the people they invite onto them. When that duty is breached and someone is injured, the resulting claim is called premises liability. It covers slip-and-fall cases that most people recognize, and it covers a much broader category of cases that most injured Nevadans do not realize they have, casino assaults, apartment-complex shootings, mall security failures, hotel pool drownings, and parking-garage attacks where the operator failed to maintain reasonable security in a known-risk environment.
The Bourassa Law Group has tried high-stakes premises cases against Las Vegas Strip resorts, off-Strip casinos, apartment management companies, retail chains, and the insurance carriers that defend them. Mark Bourassa builds these cases by getting to the documents that property operators try to keep buried, security incident reports, prior similar incidents, internal safety committee minutes, surveillance preservation, and the maintenance and inspection logs that show whether the operator was actually doing the safety work it claims to have been doing.
This page explains the legal framework Nevada applies to premises cases, the categories of claims the firm handles, the deadlines that govern these cases, the damages available under Nevada law, and the strategic reasons to retain a firm with Las Vegas trial experience for a premises matter rather than an out-of-state intake mill.
How Nevada Premises Liability Law Works
Nevada premises law uses a status-based duty framework inherited from common law and shaped by NRS Chapter 41 and Chapter 651. The duty a property owner owes depends on the status of the visitor at the time of injury.
Invitees. A person on the premises for the mutual benefit of both parties, the most common category covering customers, hotel guests, casino patrons, restaurant diners, tenants, and contractors. Property owners owe invitees the highest duty of care, the duty to inspect the premises, discover hidden dangers, repair them or warn against them, and protect against foreseeable third-party criminal acts when the risk is on notice.
Licensees. A person on the premises with permission but for the licensee’s own purpose rather than the owner’s benefit, the classic example is a social guest. The duty is to warn of known dangers and refrain from creating new ones. The duty to inspect is materially less than for invitees.
Trespassers. A person on the premises without permission. Under NRS 41.515, an owner, lessee, or occupant owes no duty of care to a trespasser and is not liable for physical harm caused by failure to exercise reasonable care. Two exceptions apply, willful or wanton conduct, and failure to exercise reasonable care once the trespasser’s presence in a place of danger is actually discovered. The trespasser-limitation statute is the reason the invitee/licensee classification matters so much in litigation.
Nevada has not adopted the unified reasonable-care-under-all-circumstances approach that some other states use to flatten the three-tier hierarchy. The status of the injured visitor remains the gateway question.
Negligent Security Cases Under NRS 651.015
When a third party assaults, robs, shoots, or otherwise criminally harms a visitor on a Nevada property, the operator can be liable under the doctrine of negligent security. The principal Nevada statutory authority is NRS 651.015, which governs the liability of keepers of hotels, inns, motels, and lodging houses.
NRS 651.015 imposes civil liability on a lodging keeper for harm caused to a patron by a non-employee third party when two elements are satisfied:
- The wrongful act was foreseeable. Foreseeability is established by prior similar incidents at the property or in the immediate vicinity, crime-rate data for the area, the operator’s own internal security assessments, warnings the operator received from law enforcement or security consultants, and the totality of the circumstances known to the operator.
- The owner failed to take reasonable precautions against the foreseeable risk. Reasonable precautions are case-specific and turn on industry standards for similar properties, the operator’s own historical practices, and the cost-benefit of additional measures relative to the magnitude of the foreseeable harm.
Common reasonable-precaution failures the firm encounters in Las Vegas casino and hotel cases:
- Inadequate uniformed security staffing relative to property size and patron volume during peak risk hours
- Unmaintained or non-functional surveillance camera coverage in known high-risk areas
- Failure to implement access control on guest-room floors after documented intruder incidents
- Lighting failures in parking structures, particularly stairwells and elevator landings
- Failure to coordinate with Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on documented gang activity, prostitution-related violence, or theft patterns
- Failure to evict or trespass-ban patrons with prior assault history on the property
Outside the lodging context, negligent security claims rely on common-law principles substantially similar to the NRS 651.015 framework. Apartment complexes, shopping malls, parking lot operators, nightclubs, and event venues all face the same foreseeability-plus-reasonable-precautions analysis under premises liability doctrine.
Categories of Premises Cases the Firm Handles
The Bourassa Law Group accepts premises liability cases across the spectrum of property types and incident profiles. The categories below represent the firm’s most active case types in the Las Vegas valley.
Casino and hotel assaults. Including stranger-on-stranger assaults in gaming areas, parking structures, and on guest-room floors, security-guard excessive-force claims, and inadequate-security cases following known-risk patterns. Major resort operators include Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts International, Wynn Resorts, the Venetian, Bellagio, Aria, and the off-Strip casino properties.
Apartment-complex shootings and assaults. Including bullet-through-wall cases where the management company failed to address known gang activity, common-area assault cases, and parking-area robberies at properties with documented prior incidents. Cases against Las Vegas-area apartment management companies turn on the operator’s compliance with reasonable industry security practices for the property’s risk profile.
Mall and retail premises violence. Including security-failure cases at the major Las Vegas malls (Fashion Show Mall, Forum Shops, Miracle Mile Shops, Town Square, Galleria at Sunset, Boulevard Mall) and at big-box retail properties where the operator’s security plan failed to address foreseeable risks.
Hotel pool drownings and near-drownings. Covered in greater detail at the firm’s Wrongful Death practice page when fatal. Survivor cases involve traumatic brain injury, anoxic injury, and lifetime care needs. Liability depends on ANSI safety compliance, lifeguard staffing decisions, depth marking, suction-entrapment risk under federal Pool and Spa Safety Act standards, and NRS 444.040 public bathing place rules.
Slip-and-fall cases on commercial property. Wet floors without warning, defective stairs, broken or missing handrails, transition-strip failures, and uneven surfaces. The cases turn on the operator’s actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition.
Elevator and escalator catastrophic failures. Maintenance log discovery from OTIS, Schindler, KONE, and Thyssenkrupp, Nevada Division of Industrial Relations inspection records, and the property operator’s own inspection compliance.
Parking-garage and parking-lot incidents. Falls from inadequate barriers, vehicular incidents within structures, and assaults in unsecured or poorly lit areas.
Swimming pool drownings outside hotels. Including apartment-complex pools, homeowners-association pools, and private-property pools governed by NRS 444.040 and Clark County pool-safety ordinances.
Burn and fire injuries on commercial premises. Kitchen fires in restaurants, in-room fires at hotels, and electrical malfunction cases.
Statute of Limitations for Nevada Premises Liability Claims
The standard statute of limitations for a Nevada premises liability claim is two years from the date of injury, under NRS 11.190(4)(e), the same general statute that applies to personal injury claims.
Specific exceptions and tolling situations to know:
- Minors. The two-year clock does not start running until the minor’s 18th birthday, under NRS 11.250. Parents bringing claims for minor-related expenses (medical bills, future earning capacity until age 18) are subject to the standard two-year period from the date of injury.
- Discovery rule. In cases where the injury or its connection to the property defect was not reasonably discoverable at the time of incident, the clock may start at the date of reasonable discovery. The application is fact-specific and Nevada courts apply it narrowly.
- Government defendants. Claims against the City of Las Vegas, Clark County, the Nevada Department of Transportation, or other government entities under NRS Chapter 41 are subject to a 6-month notice requirement before suit can be filed, in addition to the underlying statute of limitations. Missing the 6-month notice deadline bars the claim even within the 2-year period.
- Wrongful death tied to premises. A separate two-year period under NRS 11.190(4)(e) runs from the date of death rather than the date of the underlying incident.
The two-year period is short for premises cases that often require months of investigation before liability becomes clear. Early consultation with a Las Vegas premises lawyer preserves both the legal claim and the underlying evidence.
Damages Recoverable in a Nevada Premises Liability Case
Nevada premises liability damages follow the standard PI damages categories under Nevada common law. The dollar figures track injury severity, and the firm builds the damages model with the same expert support used in catastrophic cases.
Economic damages. Past medical expenses, future medical expenses (supported by life care planner projection for serious cases), lost wages and benefits to date, loss of future earning capacity, household services valuation when the injury impairs the plaintiff’s ability to maintain a household, and out-of-pocket consequential losses.
Non-economic damages. Pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, and impairment of consortium. Nevada does not cap non-economic damages in standard premises cases.
Punitive damages. Available under NRS 42.005 when the property operator acted with malice, oppression, or fraud. Documented prior similar incidents that the operator ignored, knowing failure to implement industry-standard security measures, and active concealment of safety information all support punitive submissions. Punitive damages are capped at three times compensatory damages or $300,000, whichever is greater.
Comparative fault under NRS 41.141. Nevada applies modified comparative negligence with a 50% bar. A plaintiff whose own fault exceeds 50% recovers nothing. A plaintiff whose fault is 50% or less recovers reduced damages proportional to fault. Defense counsel in premises cases routinely seeks to allocate fault to the plaintiff (failure to perceive a danger, intoxication, departure from a marked path), making the strength of the underlying liability evidence directly relevant to the recoverable damages figure.
Why Premises Cases Require Specialized Trial Counsel
Premises cases look simple from the outside. A guest is hurt on a property. The property should have prevented the hurt. The insurance company should pay. The actual litigation does not work that way.
Property operators and their insurers fight premises cases hard for three reasons. First, the damages can be substantial, especially in negligent security, drowning, and elevator cases. Second, a single adverse verdict creates precedent that affects every similar property the operator runs. Third, the operator’s internal safety documents (incident reports, prior-similar-incident logs, internal security assessments) are evidence the operator does not want produced and will resist disclosing through standard discovery.
A Las Vegas premises lawyer who knows the defense playbook works around these resistance patterns. The firm sends spoliation letters within days of intake to preserve surveillance, security incident reports, employee schedules, and maintenance records before the operator’s document retention policy cycles them out. The firm uses Nevada Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6) depositions to compel the operator to designate witnesses who can speak to safety committee deliberations, incident reporting protocols, and internal risk assessments. The firm uses Eighth Judicial District Court discovery commissioners to compel production of resistance-protected documents.
Free Premises Liability Case Evaluation
If you were injured on someone else’s property in Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City, Reno, or anywhere in Nevada, the Bourassa Law Group offers a free, confidential case evaluation. The firm handles premises liability cases on contingency, with no fee unless we recover for you.
Evidence preservation in premises cases starts within days of the incident. Surveillance video on many commercial properties cycles within 30 days or less. Security incident reports get filed and then can disappear into archived storage. Witness contact information becomes harder to track down as time passes. The sooner the firm is involved, the more complete the eventual case record.
Call 800-870-8910 or use the contact form on this page to schedule your evaluation today.
In-Depth Articles on This Practice Area
For deeper coverage of specific Nevada premises liability case types, see:
• What Is Premises Liability in Nevada
• Casino Assault Lawsuits in Vegas Resorts
• Apartment Complex Shooting Lawsuits in Nevada
• How to Sue a Hotel for Injury in Las Vegas
• How to Sue a Store for Injury in Nevada
Bourassa Law Group is a Nevada personal injury firm based in Las Vegas. Return to the firm homepage to see our full practice areas and contact options.
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