A Las Vegas construction accident claim rarely has a simple answer to who can be sued, and that is by design. Cranes, scaffolding, and heavy equipment are part of daily life across a valley that never seems to stop building, from resort corridor renovations to new residential development in Henderson and Summerlin. Most days end without incident. When something goes wrong, Nevada’s workers’ compensation system stands between an injured worker and the company that may have actually caused the harm, unlike almost any other kind of injury claim.
Erik A. Bromson represents workers and non-workers alike who are hurt in construction accidents across Nevada. Sorting out whether a claim runs through workers’ compensation, a third-party lawsuit, or both is usually the first decision in a case like this, and often the most consequential one. Getting it wrong can mean leaving real compensation on the table. Call or text (702) 213-0100 to talk through what happened.
What Counts as a Construction Accident Claim in Nevada?
A construction accident claim can arise from unsafe site conditions, defective equipment, missing fall protection, or a contractor’s failure to follow basic safety practices. Before any of that gets sorted out, one question shapes almost everything else: were you working on the site when you were hurt, or were you someone else entirely, a driver, a pedestrian, a delivery worker, a nearby resident, who got caught up in what happened there. Nevada’s workers’ compensation system changes the legal picture dramatically, but only for the first group.
Duty on a construction site is layered rather than singular. A general contractor typically owes a site-wide duty to coordinate safety across every trade working there, a subcontractor owes a narrower duty tied to its own scope of work, and a property owner owes an underlying duty to keep the premises reasonably safe even while it is under construction. Figuring out which of those duties was breached, and by whom, is the real work behind most claims we build.
Types of Construction Site Accidents We Handle
Federal safety regulators group the leading causes of construction fatalities into four categories, and the same four causes show up again and again in the serious injury cases we see.
Falls
Falls from scaffolding, ladders, roofs, and unprotected floor or wall openings are consistently the single largest cause of serious construction injuries. Missing guardrails, unsecured ladders, and fall protection that was available but not used, or that was never provided at all, are common threads in these cases. A fall from even a modest height can cause a spinal cord injury or traumatic brain injury, which is why documenting exactly what protection was or was not in place matters as much as documenting the fall itself.
Struck-By Accidents
Falling tools, dropped materials, swinging crane loads, and vehicles moving through an active work zone can strike a worker with little or no warning. These cases often turn on whether the site had a system for securing materials at height, keeping workers clear of vehicle and equipment paths, and using spotters where visibility around large machinery is limited.
Electrocution
Contact with overhead power lines, energized equipment, or wiring that was not properly de-energized before work began causes some of the most severe injuries on a job site. Improperly grounded tools, damaged extension cords, and equipment operated too close to live power lines are recurring causes, and they frequently point back to a step in the site’s own safety plan that was skipped.
Caught-In or Caught-Between Accidents
Trench and excavation collapses, and workers pulled into or pinned by heavy machinery, fall into this category. Excavation work in particular depends on proper shoring and sloping, and a collapse often points directly back to a shortcut taken on that requirement rather than to conditions no one could have controlled.
What Usually Causes These Accidents
The four categories above describe how someone got hurt. What actually caused it is usually a narrower list: inadequate training on equipment a worker was never properly shown how to use, understaffing that leaves too few hands to do a job safely, or a hazard that was reported and never fixed. Poorly maintained equipment that should have been pulled from service, and a schedule pushed hard enough that a safety step got skipped, are just as common a starting point. None of those causes are unique to any one trade, and identifying which one applies is often what separates a straightforward workers’ compensation claim from one that also supports a third-party lawsuit.
Why Workers’ Compensation Doesn’t Cover the Whole Picture
If you were injured while working on a construction site, Nevada law generally routes your claim through workers’ compensation rather than a lawsuit. NRS 616A.020 makes workers’ compensation the exclusive remedy against an employer for an on-the-job injury, which means medical care and a portion of lost wages regardless of fault, but no compensation for pain and suffering.
Construction complicates this further. Under NRS 616A.210, subcontractors and their employees are generally treated as employees of the principal contractor for workers’ compensation purposes. In practice, that often means an injured worker cannot sue the general contractor, or even a different subcontractor’s crew, for causing the accident, because Nevada law places them inside the same protected relationship as an employer. That protection is tied to the specific project, though. A contractor with no connection to the job you were hurt on, one who simply happened to be working nearby on unrelated work, sits outside that statutory employer relationship, leaving an ordinary negligence claim against it fully intact.
Several things fall outside that protection entirely. It does not extend to equipment and tool manufacturers, so a defective scaffold, power tool, crane, or safety harness can support a product liability claim independent of workers’ compensation. It also does not automatically extend to the property owner. An individual property owner is generally not treated as a statutory employer unless the owner specifically sets up a consolidated insurance program covering the project, so an owner who never did that can potentially still be sued directly. A narrow exception also exists for an employer’s own intentional conduct, though it requires proof of a specific intent to cause harm, not just negligence or even recklessness.
OSHA Citations and the Evidence That Can Disappear
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigates many serious construction accidents. A citation for a safety violation does not create a lawsuit on its own, but it can become powerful evidence in a third-party negligence claim, since it documents that a specific safety standard was violated at the time of the accident.
Maintenance logs, safety meeting records, inspection reports, and witness statements are the kind of records a contractor is not required to hold onto indefinitely, and they can be reorganized or lost once a claim seems likely. Sending a written request to preserve this material early, before that happens, keeps the record intact long enough to matter.
If You Weren’t a Construction Site Worker
Not everyone hurt at or near a construction site is a construction worker. A driver struck by equipment entering the roadway, a pedestrian hurt by falling debris outside a work zone, a delivery worker injured on an inadequately secured site, or a nearby resident affected by an excavation or scaffolding collapse is not inside Nevada’s workers’ compensation system at all. Those claims proceed as an ordinary personal injury or premises liability claim against the contractor, subcontractor, or property owner responsible, without the statutory employer limitations described above.
Damages Available in a Construction Accident Claim
Economic damages cover emergency treatment, surgery, rehabilitation, lost income, and future medical needs where an injury leaves lasting effects. For an injured worker who also qualifies for workers’ compensation, a successful third-party claim can reach damages workers’ compensation does not cover, including pain and suffering and the full extent of lost earning capacity rather than the capped wage-replacement rate workers’ compensation provides. Benefits already paid through workers’ compensation are generally subject to reimbursement out of that recovery.
Non-economic damages address pain, emotional distress, and the loss of activities that mattered before the injury. Falls, electrocutions, and caught-in accidents can cause the kind of severe, lasting trauma our traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury practices handle regularly. Where an accident proves fatal, surviving family may pursue a wrongful death claim.
Nevada Law That Applies to Construction Accident Claims
NRS 41.141 sets Nevada’s modified comparative negligence rule, allowing recovery in a third-party claim as long as your share of fault is 50 percent or less, with the award reduced by that percentage.
NRS 11.190 sets the filing deadline at two years from the date of injury for a personal injury lawsuit. That deadline runs on its own separate track from Nevada’s workers’ compensation deadlines, which move far faster: an injury generally must be reported to an employer within 7 days under NRS 616C.015, and a formal claim filed within 90 days under NRS 616C.020, timelines that catch many injured workers off guard.
Construction Accident Representation Across Nevada
Bromson Law represents injured workers and non-workers hurt in construction accidents throughout Clark County, including Las Vegas, Henderson, Laughlin, and Mesquite. The resort corridor sees constant renovation and expansion work, often carried out while a property stays open to guests, which raises exactly the kind of worker-versus-visitor question addressed above. Henderson and Summerlin continue to add residential and commercial development, Downtown Las Vegas has its own ongoing redevelopment, and infrastructure projects run throughout the valley, each bringing its own mix of contractors, subcontractors, and property owners into a single job site.
Working With Bromson Law
Erik A. Bromson has represented injured people across Nevada for more than 15 years and has handled claims for more than 5,000 clients. He takes each case personally, sorting out early whether workers’ compensation, a third-party claim, or both apply, rather than handing that analysis off to someone else. He is a member of the Nevada Justice Association and speaks Spanish.
Frequently Asked Questions About Construction Accident Claims
Can my employer retaliate against me for filing a workers’ compensation claim?
No. Nevada law, including NRS 616D.020, prohibits an employer from firing, demoting, or otherwise punishing a worker for filing a workers’ compensation claim, and the Nevada Supreme Court has recognized a separate wrongful termination claim when that protection is violated.
Can I still get workers’ compensation if the accident was partly my fault?
Generally yes. Workers’ compensation operates on a no-fault basis, so your own carelessness usually does not bar benefits the way it could reduce or defeat a third-party lawsuit. The comparative negligence rules that shape a case against a manufacturer or an uninsured owner do not apply the same way to workers’ compensation itself.
Does it matter if OSHA had already cited the contractor for similar violations before my accident?
It can matter a great deal. A pattern of prior citations for the same hazard, left uncorrected, can be difficult for a contractor to explain away as an isolated incident, and it strengthens the case that the risk was known well before you were hurt.
How do I know whether I need a workers’ compensation claim, a third-party lawsuit, or both?
Most injured construction workers need both processes running at the same time. Workers’ compensation typically starts immediately regardless of fault, while a lawsuit against an equipment maker or a property owner without statutory employer protection has to be investigated and built separately, and identifying whether one exists is worth doing before assuming workers’ compensation is your only option.
If the accident happened at a casino or resort under renovation, does that change anything?
It can. A construction worker hurt during that renovation is still generally routed through the workers’ compensation and statutory employer analysis described above. A hotel guest or visitor hurt by construction-related hazards at a resort that stayed open during the work is a different situation entirely, closer to the premises liability questions our Las Vegas casino injury lawyer page addresses, since that person was never part of the construction workforce to begin with.
What does it cost to hire a construction accident lawyer?
Erik handles these cases on a contingency fee basis, so there is no payment required upfront. Fees are collected only if the case results in a settlement or verdict, so pursuing a claim does not add to the financial pressure an injury has already created.
Talk With Our Las Vegas Construction Accident Lawyer
A construction site injury can leave you with nothing but a workers’ compensation form and the sense that nothing more is available. That is usually not true, but finding out takes someone who knows where the real limits of that system sit.
We listen, sort out what Nevada law actually allows in your situation, and move quickly on the evidence that will not wait. If you or someone you love was hurt in a construction accident in Las Vegas, Henderson, Laughlin, or Mesquite, call or text (702) 213-0100.