Hit by a Drunk Driver in Las Vegas?

This trips up almost everyone. When a drunk driver hurts you, two completely different cases come out of the same crash, and they do not depend on each other. The criminal case is the State of Nevada prosecuting the driver. A prosecutor handles it, and the goal is punishment: fines, a license suspension, probation, sometimes jail. You are a witness in that case, not a party, and any restitution the court orders is usually limited and tied to what the driver can personally afford.

Your civil case is the one that actually puts money in your pocket. It is your claim against the driver and their insurance company, and it covers the full picture of what this did to you: the hospital bills, the surgeries, the missed paychecks, the future care, and the pain you live with. You bring this case yourself, with us, and you recover in it regardless of how the criminal prosecution ends. Even if the DUI charge gets reduced or dropped on a technicality, your civil claim stands on its own.

That independence matters in real ways. You do not have to wait for the criminal case to wrap up before you start, and you should not, because evidence fades and the two-year deadline under NRS 11.190 keeps running the whole time. We frequently push your claim forward while the prosecution is still pending. If the crash also involved a fleeing driver, our page on hit-and-run claims covers that wrinkle, and serious-harm cases are walked through on our injury claim page.

In an ordinary crash, the two sides argue for months over who was at fault. A drunk driving case often skips that fight. When the driver pleads guilty or is found guilty of DUI, that result is powerful evidence in your civil claim. It tells the insurer their driver broke the law and caused the wreck, and it moves the conversation away from blame and toward the real question: what your losses are actually worth.

We do not just wait for the verdict, though. We gather the proof that surrounds it: the Nevada Highway Patrol or Metro police report, the breath or blood alcohol results, the field sobriety notes, and the booking record. We also chase down the parts the criminal case does not care about, like the surveillance video from a casino lot off the Strip, the 911 call, or the receipts that show where the driver was drinking. Built together, that record makes it very hard for an adjuster to pretend fault is still up in the air.

It also opens a door that a normal crash does not. Because driving drunk is a conscious choice to put others at risk, Nevada law allows for punitive damages in the right case, on top of the money meant to simply repay your losses. Those damages require clear and convincing proof of oppression, fraud, or malice under NRS 42.005, and they are not awarded in most cases. Whether that door is open depends on the facts, and it is one of the first things we weigh.

The drunk driver is the obvious place to start, but they are not always the only one. In a town built on bars, clubs, and casinos, people ask us constantly whether the place that served the driver can be on the hook. The honest answer is that Nevada makes this harder than most states. Under NRS 41.1305, a business that serves alcohol generally is not liable when a customer later causes a crash, so simply over-serving an adult usually is not enough.

That said, it is worth a real look every time. The narrow exception is an unlicensed social host who knowingly serves alcohol to someone under 21, and that changes the analysis. We also look beyond the bar. If the driver was working at the time, an employer may share responsibility. If a vehicle defect made the crash worse, that is another avenue. And when the at-fault driver carried little or no coverage, your own uninsured and underinsured motorist policy can step in, which is its own fight worth understanding on our uninsured motorist page.

Your share of the blame can come up too. Under NRS 41.141, Nevada follows modified comparative negligence, so as long as you are not found more than 50 percent at fault you can still recover, with the award reduced by your share. An insurer may try to pin part of the crash on you to cut what they owe, even when their driver was the one who was drinking. We do not let that go unanswered. If you want the broader picture of how Nevada injury claims work, our personal injury overview lays out the basics.

People sometimes assume that if the criminal court orders the driver to pay restitution, the matter is settled. It is not. Restitution is a piece of the driver's sentence, it tends to be capped at narrow categories, and it is only as good as the driver's ability to pay. It does not account for what the crash will cost you five years from now, and it does not touch your pain at all. Taking it does not close your civil case.

A civil claim is where the real recovery lives. It is built to cover the medical bills you have already run up and the care a doctor says you will still need, the wages you lost and the earning power you may never get back, the damage to your vehicle, and the physical and emotional toll the crash left behind. When the conduct is bad enough, added damages may be on the table on top of all of that. If your case involves long-term harm, our settlement page explains how the value gets built, and the loss of a loved one is handled with care on our wrongful death page.