Hurt Because A Property's Security Failed In Las Vegas

You went to an apartment you pay rent on, a hotel you booked, a garage you parked in, a club you walked into for the night. Somewhere a person should have felt looked after, and instead you got hurt by someone else. That is a different kind of injury. It comes with fear that does not switch off when the bruises fade, and it leaves you asking how this was allowed to happen.

Here is what a lot of people do not realize in those first raw days. The person who attacked you is not the only one the law looks at. If the property owner knew the place had a security problem and let it sit, Nevada law can hold them responsible too, and their insurance is usually where real recovery comes from. We see this across Clark County, from older complexes off Boulder Highway to busy garages near the Strip.

Erik Severino has spent more than 20 years taking on insurers and big corporations in Nevada. He knows how to pull the records that show a property owner saw the danger coming, and he knows the agencies and ordinances that set the safety standard, from local building and lighting codes to the licensing rules the state holds security companies to. The first step is simple and costs nothing: tell us what happened, and we will tell you, honestly, whether you have a case.

A negligent security claim is not about blaming the owner for the criminal's choice. It is about the duty the owner had before the crime ever happened. Under Nevada premises liability law, a business or landlord owes the people it invites onto its property a duty to use reasonable care to keep them safe, and that includes guarding against harm the owner should have seen coming.

The whole case turns on one word: foreseeability. If a property has a history of violence, robberies, or assaults, or sits in an area with a known crime problem, the law treats another attack there as something the owner had reason to expect. Once that danger is foreseeable, the owner has to take reasonable steps to address it. Working cameras. Adequate lighting in the lots and stairwells. Functioning locks and gates. Trained guards where the risk calls for them. Access control that actually controls access.

When the owner skips those steps and someone gets hurt, the failure to provide reasonable security becomes a legal cause of the harm, sitting right alongside the attacker's own conduct. The owner does not get to hide behind the criminal. That is the heart of every claim we build, and it is why our premises liability practice reads the property's records so closely.

Where this lands matters too. We see these cases across Clark County: apartment complexes along the Boulder Highway corridor, parking structures off the I-15 and the 215 Beltway, and nightlife properties near the Strip and in Henderson off St. Rose Parkway. A suit over the Justice Court limit gets filed in the Eighth Judicial District Court, and Nevada's modified comparative negligence rule under NRS 41.141 applies: you can still recover as long as you are not more than 50% at fault, with your share reducing the award.

The property's insurance company has handled these cases before, and they reach for the same moves every time. The first is the simplest: blame the criminal and nobody else. They will say the attack was an unforeseeable act of a stranger, so the owner could not have prevented it. That argument falls apart the moment we show prior incidents, police calls, and warnings the owner already had.

The second move is to put the blame on you. The adjuster will suggest you should not have been in that lot at that hour, that you provoked it, that you ignored some risk. Nevada's comparative fault rule under NRS 41.141 means they only need to shift enough blame onto you to cut the bill, so they push hard. We answer it with the facts of what a reasonable property would have done.

The third move is the quietest and the most damaging: run out the clock on the evidence. If no one demands the surveillance footage, the camera loop records over the night in question. If no one asks for guard logs and work orders, they get filed away. By the time you call, the proof that the property knew and did nothing may be days from disappearing. That is the real reason to talk to a lawyer early, and it has nothing to do with pressure. You can also read how this plays out in our slip and fall and store and restaurant injury cases.