Fired for Filing? Talk to a Reno Workers Comp Retaliation Lawyer

Build the Record While It Is Still Happening

Almost every one of these cases turns on a timeline, and timelines are easy to build in the moment and nearly impossible to rebuild a year later.

Can You Get A Copy Of Your Personnel File In Nevada?

Nevada law says you can. Under NRS 613.075, an employer has to let you inspect the records it used to judge your qualifications and any discipline, a termination included, and give you a copy at no more than its actual cost. Confidential investigation files and reports from earlier employers are excluded.

After a firing, the request runs on a clock: the employer has to allow the inspection within 60 days of the termination, and it has to provide a copy if you ask within that same period. Copies only go to people who worked there more than 60 days, so a short temp placement may not qualify.

The same statute lets you answer a write-up in writing, and the employer has to keep your explanation in the file. That matters in a retaliation case. A first-ever write-up that lands a week after you report a repetitive strain injury, answered on paper that same week, reads very differently from one nobody ever disputed.

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Your Injury and Your Job Are Handled on Different Tracks

The comp claim asks whether your injury is covered and what benefits you are owed. That runs administratively, and for northern workers the disputes are heard through the Nevada Department of Administration's offices serving the north from Carson City.

What happened to your employment afterward is a different question with a different analysis and a different timeline. People often assume raising one means abandoning the other. It does not. Both can be live at the same time, and the facts that support one frequently support the other, which is a good reason to describe the whole situation in one conversation rather than splitting it up.

If the claim itself was denied as well, start with our Reno denial page, because that deadline moves faster than anything on the employment side.

Can A Reno Employer Fire You For Filing Workers Comp?

Not for filing the claim. Firing someone for filing a workers' comp claim can be its own claim in Nevada, the tort of retaliatory discharge, which the Nevada Supreme Court recognized in Hansen v. Harrah's in 1984. The court decided the question for the first time in that case and made a narrow exception to at-will employment, reasoning that employers who could threaten jobs over claims would undercut the whole comp system.

The case came out of northern Nevada. It joined two appeals. A repairman who fixed pinball and video machines for Harrah's brought one from the First Judicial District Court, and an assistant bar manager at the MGM Grand Hotel in Reno brought the other from the Second Judicial District Court in Washoe County, after a comp claim for a hernia. Each case ran the same way: the claims administrator turned the claim down, a hearings officer reversed that decision, and the employer fired the worker afterward. The Supreme Court reversed the dismissal of both lawsuits.

Nevada employment is otherwise at will, so an employer can still end a job for reasons that have nothing to do with the claim, and that's the explanation you'll usually be given. Employers rarely say it out loud, so the case gets built from the timing and the paper trail.

The job side of a northern case runs through the district courts, not the Carson City hearing rooms. The Second Judicial District Court serves Washoe County, including Reno and Sparks, and the First Judicial District Court serves Carson City and Storey County, where the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center sits. For the comp side of a claim from those places, see our Sparks workers comp page or our Carson City workers comp page.

Write Down Today's Date and What Changed

Do it before you decide whether to call anyone. It commits you to nothing and it is the only part of this you cannot recreate later.

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