Can you shed light on any recent changes or trends in Nevada’s legal landscape that have influenced personal injury cases? One of the ongoing issues in Nevada’s personal injury landscape is a petition to limit attorneys’ fees for personal injury cases. The petition, named Nevadans for Fair Recovery, seeks to put a limit on how much personal injury attorneys can charge in a personal injury matter. Ordinarily, personal injury attorneys’ fees are based on the length and depth of the representation provided. Attorneys’ fees for cases that settle before litigation is a lot less than cases that go to trial. The petition, if passed, will put a hard limit on attorneys’ fees regardless of the type of representation rendered. If this petition is passed, I can see many experienced personal injury attorneys moving to other fields of practice as the profit margin will not be enough to support their business. For us personal injury lawyers, we are taking on a potential risk by accepting your case. There are more than enough times when a client of mine does not make any meaningful recovery because they were either partially at fault or because there is no valid insurance coverage and asset from the wrongdoer’s side. In those cases, we have to bite the bullet on our costs and fees because that is the nature of our representation. It only takes a few cases to potentially cause a smaller firm to go bankrupt. What specific strategies do you employ to effectively handle complex personal injury cases in Nevada, such as those involving multivehicle accidents or significant injuries, to ensure clients receive the compensation they deserve? In an accident where there are a lot of 14 LAWYER MONTHLY DECEMBER 2024 injured parties and not enough coverage, the insurance company will generally offer their entire settlement budget to all the parties and ask everyone to come to an agreement on how much each party will get. In these scenarios, the general rule is for each party to get a portion of the settlement in proportion to their medical expenses accrued. We often refer to these types of settlement as “pro-rata settlement”. If we anticipate that a case may require a pro-rata settlement, we would have a discussion with our client beforehand and come to an agreement on a strategy that would secure a fair settlement for the client. One of the strategies we use is asking our clients to receive treatment using their health insurance. In Nevada, there is a legal doctrine known as the “collateral source rule”. I often call this rule the “none of your business” rule because this doctrine excludes evidence of alternative sources of payment for people injured in a personal injury claim. This means that if our client went to see a doctor using the client’s own health insurance, the evidence that
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