Nevada Work Injury Laws – 4 That You Should Know

If you are an employee who sustained a work injury in the state of Nevada, you usually cannot sue your employer for damages. Instead, your “exclusive remedy” is to file a workers’ compensation claim with your employer’s insurance carrier.

Here are four things to know about Nevada workers’ compensation laws.

1. Workers’ comp benefits include medical care, disability, and training;
2. Workers’ comp insurance coverage is no-fault;
3. There are strict deadlines to file a workers’ comp claim; and
4. Independent contractors are not eligible for workers’ comp.

1. Workers’ comp benefits include medical care, disability, and training

Depending on the nature and extent of your work-related injuries, you may be able to receive one or more of the following workers’ comp benefits:

• medical treatment from an authorized medical provider and/or chiropractors;
• temporary disability;
• permanent disability;
• death benefits (for spouses and dependents of deceased workers);
• vocational rehabilitation; and/or
• mileage reimbursement

Temporary total disability (TTD) and permanent total disability (PTD) benefits are two-thirds of your average monthly wages.

Temporary partial disability (TPD) benefits are what the TTD amount would have been minus your new salary for light- or modified work.

Calculating permanent partial disability (PPD) is a little trickier:

• First, your doctor will assign you an impairment percentage. (For example, if you are half impaired, you would get a 50% disability rating.)
• Then this disability rating gets multiplied by your pre-injury salary and then multiplied again by .006.

In my experience, most injured employees choose to receive PPD as a lump sum.

Note that Nevada’s workers’ compensation system caps 2023 disability benefits at $4,873.20 per month.¹

2. Workers’ comp insurance coverage is no-fault

For you to benefit from Nevada workers’ compensation coverage, you do not have to prove that your employer did something wrong. Instead, you just have to show that it is more likely than not that your injury was caused by work.

It does not matter whether:

• your workplace injury was from a singular unforeseen accident or
• it is an occupational injury from repeated exposure or repetitive movements.²

3. There are strict deadlines to file a workers’ comp claim

You must report your injury to a supervisor within seven days. This incident report is called the Notice of Injury or Occupational Disease (Form C-1).

Then you must go to an authorized provider, and you both must complete the Employee’s Claim for Compensation/Report of Initial Treatment (Form C-4). This claim must be mailed in within three days of treatment and within 90 days of the injury.

Your employer’s insurance company then has 30 days to accept or deny your workers’ comp claim. If you disagree with the result, you can appeal it within 70 days of the decision.

(All relevant forms are available online with instructions from the Nevada Department of Business and Industry, Division of Industrial Relations (DIR), Workers’ Compensation Section (WCS).)³

4. Independent contractors are not eligible for workers’ comp.

Under Nevada state law, independent contractors are not considered employees and are therefore not entitled to file for workers’ comp. So if you are an independent contractor who sustained a workplace injury, you can hire a Nevada attorney and file a traditional civil lawsuit against the employer.⁴

Personal injury law firms like mine operate by contingency fee. This means I do not get paid until if and when I win you a settlement.

Additional resources

For more information from Nevada’s official Workers’ Compensation Section (WCS) website, refer to the following:

• Employee’s Guide for Workers’ Compensation – Printable pamphlet with general information.
• Filing a Workers’ Compensation Claim – Summary of filing process and statutes of limitations.
• Complaint Form – Form to submit to the WCS to report a violation.
• If Your Claim is Denied – Your options for appeal.
• Claim Reopening – Directions for opening a closed workers’ compensation claim.

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