Las Vegas Slip and Fall Lawyer for Casino, Hotel and Store Falls

What should I do right after I fall at a casino, hotel or store in Las Vegas?

Get checked out, even if you are embarrassed and even if you think you can walk it off. Ask security or a manager to call paramedics if you are hurt, and tell them every place that hurts. A fall onto marble or concrete can bruise a brain or crack a hip in ways that do not announce themselves for a day. Your first medical record is the one an insurance adjuster will read first and quote longest.

Then protect what you can. This is the short list.

• Take photos of the spot where you fell, from several angles, and include whatever caused it, such as a wet floor, a torn carpet edge, a loose tile, a missing sign or a cord across the walkway.
• Take a picture of your shoes and what you were wearing, and keep both.
• Get the name of the employee who helped you, and the names and numbers of anyone who watched it happen.
• Ask for the incident report number or the name of the person who wrote it, and write down what time it is.

Do not sign anything just to be polite. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not accept a gift card, a free night, a comped meal or a promise to cover your first bill without reading what you are signing, because some of those come with a release attached. If you were taken to the hospital, ask someone to go back and take photos for you, or call us. We can send a preservation letter the same day.

Do I actually have a slip and fall case?

You have a case when a property owner or operator failed to use reasonable care and that failure hurt you. That sounds simple. The proof is where these cases get hard, and it is the reason a lot of lawyers turn them down.

Four things generally have to line up. There was a dangerous condition. The owner or operator was responsible for the space. The owner either created the problem or knew about it, or it had been there long enough that a reasonable inspection would have found it. And the fall caused real injury. Missing any one of those four is what the defense looks for.

People with real cases give up all the time because they think the fall was their own fault. It was a wet floor and they were looking at their phone. It was a step they did not see. They had a drink. Those facts matter, and we will get to them, but they rarely end a case by themselves. Tim, our office manager, tells people to say everything on the first call, including the embarrassing parts, because we cannot build around something we do not know.

If you do not have a case, we will say so plainly. Dean does not sign up people to see what happens. We would rather tell you the truth on the first call than waste a year of your life.

How do you prove the property owner knew about the hazard?

This is the heart of every slip and fall case. Nevada law generally does not make a property owner pay just because someone fell on the property. You have to show the owner was at fault, and that usually means showing notice.

Notice comes in a few forms. The owner had actual notice, which means someone on staff knew. A guest complained, an employee spilled the drink or a worker saw the leak and walked on. The owner had constructive notice, which means the hazard existed long enough that a reasonable inspection would have caught it. And in some situations, particularly self-service stores, the way the business runs its operation makes certain spills so predictable that the business may be held responsible even if no one saw the specific puddle. Nevada's Supreme Court has been cautious about that idea and has refused to extend it to sit-down restaurants, so we plan to prove notice the ordinary way and look for the self-service angle in grocery and buffet cases.

How is notice proven? With time. Surveillance video shows how long the liquid sat there and whether anyone walked past it. Cleaning logs and inspection sheets show when the area was last checked, and whether the checks were really done or only signed. Work orders show prior complaints about the same leak or the same loose tile. Employee schedules show whether anyone was assigned to the area. The incident report shows what staff said in the first hour, before a lawyer helped them phrase it.

That is why the first weeks matter. The evidence of notice lives in records the owner controls and can lose, and the video is the first to go.

Will the surveillance video still be there?

Maybe, and maybe not, which is why you should not wait to find out. Casinos in particular run extensive camera systems and watch their floors closely. Most other businesses record over footage on a schedule, and we have seen no single retention period that applies to everyone. A grocery store may keep a clip for a short time unless someone flags it. A resort may save the clip of your fall for its own claims file and overwrite everything leading up to it, which is the part that shows the hazard sitting there.

A preservation letter is a written demand to the property owner and its insurer to keep the video, the incident report, the cleaning and inspection logs, the maintenance records and the staffing schedule. We send them quickly and we ask for the footage before the fall as well as after it. A written demand also creates a record that the owner was on notice of a claim. If the owner then loses the evidence, the law gives us tools. In some cases a judge can tell a jury it may assume the missing evidence would have hurt the owner. That is a strong remedy, but we do not want to rely on it if we can get the real clip instead.

If you can, ask the property in writing to save the video, and keep a copy. Send an email to the manager or the guest services address with the date, the time and the location. Then call us and we will send the formal letter.

What should I know about the incident report and what they ask me to sign?

The incident report is the property owner's version of what happened, written by its employee, usually within minutes. It is not neutral. Security is trained to write down things that help the owner, such as "guest stated she did not see the wet floor" or "guest had been drinking," whether or not that is what you said.

You can and should ask for a copy. They may say no. Ask for the report number. Then give accurate basic facts, such as your name, contact information and where you fell, and decline to give a recorded or written statement until you have talked to a lawyer.

The forms deserve the most care. Some ask you to describe the fall in your own words, and your words become evidence. Some are medical releases that give the owner's insurer open access to your records. Some are releases of liability, sometimes tucked into the paperwork for a comped stay, a payment for your ER bill or a small cash offer. A release signed for a few hundred dollars can end a claim worth far more. A claim you settle in the first week almost never accounts for the surgery you do not yet know you need.

If you already signed something, do not panic. Bring it to us. We read these forms for a living.

How do casino slip and fall cases work?

Casinos are among the most common places for a Las Vegas fall, and they are the most prepared to defend one. Marble floors polished to a shine. Carpet seams and transitions between surfaces. Spills near bars and slot banks. Rain tracked in through the doors during a monsoon storm. Stairs and escalators in dim lighting that is designed to keep your eyes on the machines and not the floor.

On the other side, casinos run some of the most extensive camera systems of any business, and they know how to find what they need in a hurry. Their surveillance rooms can usually identify the exact moment a guest fell. So the question is not whether a video exists but what is on it, who has watched it and whether it is still there when we ask.

Casinos serve alcohol on the gaming floor, and then sometimes argue that a guest who fell had been drinking. That argument shows up often. We deal with it by looking at the actual video, at how long the hazard was there and at what the casino's own staff did.

Dean has handled hotel and casino premises cases for decades. Our results list includes a hotel and casino case where four attorneys told the client there was no case, and it resolved for $29,000,000. Past results do not predict yours. Read more about casino slip and fall cases on our dedicated page.

What about hotels, resorts and pool decks?

Hotels owe their guests a duty of reasonable care in the lobby, the hallways, the elevators, the guest rooms and the grounds, and the lawsuit can name the owner, the operator and a management company. Wet tile in a bathroom. A loose stair tread. A pool deck slick with water and sunscreen. A broken lounge chair. A carpet that bunches in a corridor. A tub with no non-slip surface. Patio misters that leave walkways wet.

Resort pools bring their own problems. Decks are wet most of the day, towels get left behind and glass breaks. When someone is injured near water, the issues sometimes overlap with drowning and near-drowning, which are far more serious than a sprained ankle. Our hotel and resort page and our premises liability page cover the broader duty of property owners.

One particular issue in resort cases is that several companies can be responsible for one space. The company that owns the building may not be the one that runs the restaurant, the pool, the cleaning crew or the shops. The company that was supposed to mop might be a contractor with its own insurance. Finding all of them before the deadline is part of the job.

What about restaurants, grocery stores and big retailers?

These are the falls people brush off, and they often cause the longest recoveries. A slip on a grape in the produce section. A spilled drink at a buffet. A freshly mopped floor with no yellow sign. A wet entryway in a rainy week. A fast food restaurant that ignores a leaking drink machine.

Stores often have mats, cones and cleaning schedules, and when they follow them well, they have a defense. When they do not, the records often prove it. Our results list includes a grocery store fall that resolved for $800,000 after the store offered nothing, and a restaurant fall that resolved for $2,000,000 after a $7,000 offer. We do not repeat these numbers to promise you anything. We repeat them because insurers' first offers are often a fraction of what a case is worth.

We have dedicated pages on restaurant falls and on grocery and retail store falls.

What if the fall was on stairs, ramps or a construction site?

Stairs injure people because they are unforgiving. A fall down a flight can break bones, split a skull and end a career. When the stairs themselves are the problem, the case is about design and maintenance. Risers of uneven height. A handrail that is missing, too short or loose. Poor lighting at the top. Slick treads. A landing that appears flat but is not.

Dean has handled enough of these cases to see a pattern, and the pattern is the cost of speed. Las Vegas has been building new hotels, venues and attractions at a rapid pace, and when a project is rushed, someone skips the handrail or builds a step a little off. A lot of lawyers will not take those cases because they are difficult and the defendants have deep pockets. We do.

Those cases tend to involve building codes, architects, contractors and inspectors in addition to the owner. They usually require an expert, and we are willing to hire one at our own expense before we know how the case will end.

I am visiting from out of state. Can I still bring a slip and fall claim?

Yes. Your claim is against the property owner and its insurer, and it does not matter where you live. Because the fall happened in Clark County, the case is generally brought here, and Nevada law will usually apply. You do not need to stay in town.

The practical advice for visitors is the same as for anyone else, with one addition. Get home, get treated and tell your doctors the whole story. The insurance company will call and be polite, and they hope you are tired, far from home and ready to take a small number and be done. Do not.

We handle the case from Las Vegas. You may need to come back for a deposition or, if the case goes to trial, to testify, and we tell you early if that is likely. Many of our out-of-town clients complete most of their case by phone and video.

What if I was partly to blame for my fall?

You may still recover. Nevada follows a modified comparative negligence rule. You can generally recover as long as your share of the blame is not greater than the property owner's, with your recovery reduced by your percentage. Fifty percent is allowed. Fifty-one percent is not.

That makes fault percentages the most important numbers in the case, and the insurance company knows it. They will say the hazard was open and obvious, that you were looking at your phone, that your shoes were wrong, that you had been drinking, that you were rushing. Some of that is fair and we will tell you if it is. But Nevada law does not automatically let a property owner off the hook just because a danger was visible. A visible danger the owner could have fixed, marked or blocked is still the owner's responsibility. In a casino or a hotel, where people are looking at lights, art, signs and companions, owners know that guests are not watching the floor.

Be honest about all of it. The embarrassing details come out in discovery anyway. A client who hid something looks worse than a client who owned it from the start.

Why do insurance companies fight slip and fall cases so hard?

Because these cases are cheap to deny and expensive to lose. Premises insurers handle thousands of falls, and they have a playbook. Say the owner did not know. Say the hazard was obvious. Say the injuries are from age or an old back problem. Offer a few thousand dollars to the person who is scared and out of work, and see if they take it.

They are also good at timing. The longer the case sits, the more the video gets overwritten, the witnesses scatter and the injured person's bills pile up. A person with unpaid rent and medical collections becomes a person who will accept less.

Our answer is to move first and to be willing to try the case. Dean has said that insurers look at who is on the other side. A firm that investigates, hires experts and files suit gets a different offer from a firm that is known to settle. We cannot promise a verdict, and no honest lawyer can. We can promise that we will build the case as if it is going to a jury. The record of what we have done is on our results page.

What injuries do falls cause?

Falls hurt more than people expect, and older guests and visitors carrying luggage or children get hurt the worst. Wrists and ankles break when people try to catch themselves. Hips and pelvises break when they cannot. Knees tear, shoulders tear, and discs in the neck and lower back herniate. A fall onto a hard floor can also cause a concussion or a more serious brain injury, and the head injury sometimes gets missed because the broken bone hurts more.

If you hit your head, say so to every doctor you see, even if you felt fine at the time. We have pages on traumatic brain injury and broken bones that explain what these injuries can mean over time. Treatment that stops early, or a record that leaves things out, is what insurers point to later.

What is a slip and fall case worth?

It depends on how badly you were hurt, how long you will be hurt and what you can prove about the owner's fault. The things that move the number most are the medical bills now and later, whether you needed surgery, whether you can go back to the same work, how your life has changed and the comparative fault argument.

Broken hips, wrists and ankles, torn rotator cuffs, herniated discs and head injuries sit at the high end. Soft tissue injuries sit lower, though they can still be real and painful. Older clients are often hurt more badly by the same fall, and the defense will say their age is the cause. A person who is older or already has health problems can still recover for the harm the fall caused or made worse.

Our results list includes slip and fall cases that began with offers of zero, $20,000, $25,000 and $70,000 and ended at $350,000, $6,000,000 and $1,500,000. Each case had its own facts and none predicts what yours will bring. We do not guess a number before we have the records, and you should be wary of anyone who does.

Where does the Sphere fit in?

The Sphere has its own page because it raises its own questions. Crowds, steps, ramps, lighting and event staffing are different from a grocery aisle. If you were hurt there, see our page on Sphere injuries.

How long do I have, and what does it cost to call?

Most Nevada injury lawsuits must be filed within two years of the fall. If a public entity owns the property, such as a county building, a school or a transit facility, special rules apply, including a written claim filed with the entity and a limit on damages. Tell us right away and we will handle them.

Calling us costs nothing. We work on a contingency basis, which means no fee until we win. We advance the costs of the case, and we explain the terms in plain words before you sign.

When you call, Tim or someone on his team will talk with you first. It is a real conversation. If you want to know how it goes, read about what happens when you call, or call us at (702) 500-7070.