Las Vegas Burn Injury Attorneys

Nevada’s premises duty is judge-made law, not a single statute. In Moody v. Manny’s Auto Repair, 110 Nev. 320, 871 P.2d 935 (1994), the Nevada Supreme Court stopped hinging recovery on the old trespasser/licensee/invitee classes and held that an owner or occupier of land owes a general duty of reasonable care when another is injured on that land. The same opinion kept status relevant to the measure of that care: it said the status of the injured party may not be the dispositive factor, and that a reasonable person would take greater precautions for someone invited onto the premises than for a trespasser. In Foster v. Costco Wholesale Corp., 128 Nev. 773, 291 P.3d 150 (2012), it adopted Restatement (Third) of Torts section 51 and concluded that a landowner owes a duty of reasonable care to entrants for risks that exist on the property. Nevada has long read that duty to include inspecting the premises for dangers the owner does not yet know about and warning of hidden or concealed perils (Twardowski v. Westward Ho Motels, 86 Nev. 784, 476 P.2d 946 (1970)). (A condition being open and obvious does not automatically relieve the owner of that duty; it bears on whether the owner acted reasonably and on the injured person’s own share of the fault.)

Scalding hotel showers, tubs, and hot tubs. Plumbing industry standards call for anti-scald controls, such as thermostatic mixing valves, limit stops, or pressure-balancing valves, that limit how hot the water reaching a shower or tub can get. Standards of that kind are industry practice rather than law in themselves, so part of a scald case is working out which code or standard applied to the building, whether the jurisdiction adopted it, and what the water temperature actually was. A scald deep enough to need burn treatment is a reason to have the fixture, the mixing valve and the maintenance records examined before anything is repaired or replaced. The technical mechanics of these cases (code sections, limit-stop failure modes, maintenance negligence) are covered in depth in our analysis of scalding burns from hotel showers and defective-plumbing liability.

Pool and pool-deck chemical burns. Public pools in Nevada are regulated by state rule, covering matters such as water chemistry and the storage and dosing of pool chemicals, so part of a chemical-burn case is establishing which requirements applied to that pool and what the operator actually did. A chemical burn from improper dosing, a malfunctioning feeder, or mishandled acid is a premises-and-chemical-handling negligence claim against the operator or management company. Contact burns from superheated Strip pavement and pool decks are a related premises issue, examined in our piece on pavement and pool-deck heat burns in Las Vegas.

Track one: workers’ compensation against your employer. Nevada’s workers’-comp system (NRS Chapters 616A, 616D) is generally the exclusive remedy against your own employer. It pays medical and wage benefits regardless of fault, but it does not pay for pain and suffering, and it caps wage replacement. Note that a licensed principal or general contractor is treated as a statutory employer: the “independent enterprise” exception in NRS 616B.603(3)(a) does not apply to a contractor licensed under chapter 624, which shapes who counts as “your employer” on a multi-contractor jobsite.

Track two: the third-party claim that comp does not bar. Workers’ comp blocks suits against your employer. It does not block a full personal-injury claim against a negligent third party: the equipment manufacturer, a separate subcontractor, the utility, or a property owner. That third-party case can recover the pain-and-suffering and full economic damages comp leaves on the table.

Federal safety standards do real work in the third-party case. OSHA’s electrical safe-work-practices rule, 29 CFR 1910.333, requires de-energizing live parts before work unless that is infeasible. A violation is evidence of the standard of care. It is not, by itself, a private cause of action, but it helps prove a third party’s negligence. For high-voltage and overhead-line contact, NRS 455.220 sets minimum clearance distances (at least 10 feet for lines up to 50 kV), and a clearance violation can run to the responsible party.

One more piece protects your net recovery. When you collect from a third party, your workers’-comp insurer normally has a subrogation lien against that recovery under NRS 616C.215. A 2025 reform, SB 258, caps that lien at the lesser of the full lien or one-third of the total recovery (then reduced by one-half of the verified reasonable costs of pursuing the claim), a meaningful protection on the dollars that reach you.

The full worksite framework (who qualifies as a third party, how comp and the tort case run in parallel) is on our construction and worksite accident page.

The “guest recovery” release. Resorts often route guest injuries to a customer-service or “guest recovery” team rather than to a legal process, offering room credits, dining vouchers, or a future stay, sometimes attached to a “satisfaction” document that contains release language. Accepting it can extinguish a claim worth far more, often before grafting is even scheduled.

The quick release before the injury extent is known. Insurers may present a settlement and a broad release within days, framed around an artificial deadline and with no accounting for future medical care. Because the future scar-revision surgeries are the largest part of a burn’s value, a release signed early can bar exactly the recovery that matters most.

The “it’s just cosmetic” recharacterization. When valuation does happen, the most common defense move is to reframe scar-revision surgery, laser therapy, and pressure garments as cosmetic and optional rather than medically necessary, and insurers reinforce it by citing cosmetic-exclusion policy language. The counter is medical: functional impairment, contracture, pain, and the documented psychological impact are not cosmetic, and a credible life-care plan grounded in TBSA and burn depth resists the discount.

The single-defendant assumption. Settling with the obvious defendant (the driver, the venue, the employer’s comp carrier) while a products or third-party claim goes unexplored is how the deeper source of recovery gets left behind. This is the whole reason routing the burn by its cause comes first.