Fired For Filing Workers Comp? Nevada Calls That Retaliation.

Most people who call us after a firing assume the termination killed their workers comp case. It is the single biggest misconception in this area of law, and it runs exactly backwards. Your comp claim survives the firing. And the firing itself, if it came because you filed, hands you a second legal claim your employer now has to answer for.

The two tracks run side by side. The comp claim keeps moving through Nevada's system: medical care, benefit checks, and if the insurer plays games, an appeal through the state Hearings Division. The retaliation case is different. It is a civil lawsuit against your employer for the firing itself, filed in regular court, and it seeks what the termination took from you.

We see the same story across the valley, whether the injury happened on a casino floor on the Strip, at a distribution dock in North Las Vegas, or on a build site out in Summerlin. A worker gets hurt, files the claim they are legally entitled to file, and the job that praised them for years suddenly finds a problem with their performance. If that is your story, the timing is evidence, and you are holding a stronger hand than you think.

Employers lean hard on the phrase "at-will state," and Nevada is one. What they leave out is the exception that sits right on top of it. In Hansen v. Harrah's, decided in 1984, the Nevada Supreme Court held that firing a worker in retaliation for filing a workers comp claim is actionable in tort. In plain terms: the firing itself becomes something you can sue over, because it violates a public policy the state takes seriously, protecting injured workers who use the system built for them.

That case started the way yours may have. A Harrah's repairman got hurt, fought for his benefits, won them, and was fired. The court looked at that sequence and refused to let at-will employment be used as a shield for punishing a comp claim. Forty years on, that is still the rule, and it is the foundation every one of these cases is built on.

The suit runs in civil court, not through the comp system, which matters for what it can recover. Comp benefits follow a fixed schedule under NRS Chapter 616C. A retaliation case is not on that schedule. It goes after the harm the firing caused, starting with your lost wages, and the deadlines for bringing it are short enough that waiting is the one move that can sink you.

The comp claim belongs to you, not to the job you no longer have. Medical treatment, disability checks, and any settlement ride on your injury and your claim, and a termination does not erase them. Insurers know injured workers assume otherwise, and a firing is a convenient moment to cut care or deny the claim and hope you disappear.

If that happens, the denial is appealable, and the window is unforgiving: 70 days from the date the insurer mails its written determination to request a hearing before a Hearing Officer, through the State of Nevada Hearings Division here in Las Vegas. The clock runs from the mailing date, not the day you open the envelope. Our denied claims page covers that ladder rung by rung, and we handle the filings so a deadline never decides your case for you.

Running both tracks at once is the whole game. The comp claim pays for treatment and lost time now. The retaliation case answers for the firing. Handling them together, with one office that sees the full picture, is how you keep the insurer's story and the employer's story from quietly propping each other up.

You will almost never find a memo that says the quiet part out loud. You do not need one. Years of clean reviews, then a claim, then a sudden paper trail of discipline is a sequence that only makes sense one way, and it is the backbone of these cases. Keep everything: old evaluations, new write-ups, schedules, and any text where the injury or the claim comes up. If your injury came from a construction site or a warehouse floor, the incident records from that day matter too.