National Wrong-Way Crash Lawyer: How a Head-On Collision Case Is Built When the Other Driver Was Going the Wrong Way
The Moment You Are Reading This
If you are on this page, someone in your family was almost certainly driving in the correct direction. That is the first thing we need to say out loud, because in the hours and days after a wrong-way crash, the wrong question can take root: could we have done something? The answer — in nearly every case we have ever seen — is no. The other driver was going the wrong way. The other driver was impaired, confused, lost, or doing something the rest of us would never do. Your loved one was simply on the road, in the correct lane, obeying the speed limit, headlights on. That is what a head-on collision looks like from the right side of the windshield: nothing to do, nowhere to go, and a fraction of a second that decides everything.
We are the senior trial team at Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We have built a national practice around catastrophic crashes, and a meaningful share of our docket is the kind of case the new UNLV study is putting back on the front page: a wrong-way driver, often impaired, often in the middle of the night, often going the wrong way down a ramp or an off-ramp into oncoming traffic. We do not run that kind of case as a sideline. We run it as a fight. This page is built for the person whose family member was just hit by a wrong-way driver in Nevada — and for the person who is reading this for a friend, a neighbor, or a client, and needs to know what the law actually says.
What UNLV Just Confirmed, and Why It Matters to Your Case
Researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas have produced a study that any trial lawyer handling Nevada highway cases should know cold. The study’s central finding is this: fatal wrong-way collisions in Nevada are increasing, and the rise has continued even as the Nevada Department of Transportation has expanded its prevention program. The story is not a story about a few isolated incidents. It is a story about a pattern, and the pattern is the kind of pattern that creates legal notice — the kind of pattern that makes a defense lawyer’s “we did not know” argument much harder to tell in front of a jury.
What does the UNLV study mean for you, in the most direct terms? Two things. First, it confirms what the crash scene will already tell us: a wrong-way driver is almost never an accident in the moral sense. It is a near-always preventable act — the result of impairment, distraction, or a design failure on the roadway that the responsible agency either has not fixed or has not fixed well enough. Second, the study itself becomes evidence. In a wrongful-death or catastrophic-injury case, the UNLV report is admissible proof that the danger at this off-ramp, on this corridor, in this county, was a known and studied danger — long before the night your family member came home from work. That is a powerful thing to put in front of a jury.
We are going to talk about the legal theories, the evidence, the deadlines, the insurance playbook, and the money in a moment. First, let us make sure you understand what the people we are about to go to war with are doing, and why the UNLV study has rattled them.
Why Wrong-Way Collisions Happen on Nevada’s Corridors
Nevada’s geography gives the wrong-way driver an unusual number of chances. The Las Vegas Valley sits on a freight and tourism corridor that funnels tens of millions of visitors a year through one of the most complex interchange systems in the country. Locals call it the Spaghetti Bowl — a network of ramps, connectors, and one-way transitions that confuses even experienced drivers, let alone the out-of-state visitor who has just stepped off a red-eye and is trying to find a hotel on the Strip. The corridors that matter most for wrong-way crashes are the ones the study and the Nevada Department of Transportation have spent years trying to harden: I-15, the spine that runs from Southern California through Las Vegas toward the rest of the country, and US-95, the cross-state route that ties Las Vegas to the north. Their off-ramps — the places where a confused or impaired driver enters a highway going the wrong direction — are the front line of this entire fight.
The time pattern matters as much as the place pattern. The hours between midnight and 5 AM are the wrong-way hours in Las Vegas. That is not a coincidence. The Clark County entertainment economy is a 24-hour liquor-license economy, and the late-night and early-morning hours are when the impaired driver population is largest, when fatigue is deepest, when the highway lighting is thinnest, and when the chance of a sober witness spotting a wrong-way vehicle before the impact is lowest. The UNLV researchers put numbers to this pattern. We will use those numbers, in the courtroom, to explain to a jury why this was not a random event but a predictable one — and why the legal system owes your family an answer.
NDOT has responded, and the response is part of the legal record too. The agency has begun installing high-intensity, LED-rimmed “Wrong Way” signs at the highest-risk entry points, and the new systems include thermal detection cameras that can see a wrong-way vehicle at the moment it enters the ramp and push an alert to the wrong-way driver and to the Nevada Highway Patrol at the same time. We are fans of this technology. We are also trial lawyers. And from our side of the bench, the existence of the technology creates two consequences we intend to use: it raises the standard of care for any ramp where the technology is not yet installed, and it gives us a precise, time-stamped, temperature-confirmed record of how the wrong-way vehicle entered the highway. The thermal camera footage is the single most important piece of evidence in many of these cases, and we will come back to it.
Who Can Be Held Liable for a Wrong-Way Head-On Collision
The first instinct of a family member is to blame the wrong-way driver, and that instinct is correct. The wrong-way driver is the primary defendant in nearly every case we file. But the wrong-way driver is rarely the only pocket. Below, we walk you through the four defendant categories we investigate in this kind of case, in the order we typically reach for them.
The wrong-way driver. A driver who enters a divided highway or a one-way ramp going the wrong direction has violated the rules of the road in the clearest possible way. Under Nevada law, that violation is captured in the relevant statute in NRS Chapter 484B — the chapter that governs lane usage and directional flow, including the prohibition on wrong-way driving codified at NRS 484B.600. When a defendant violates a safety statute and that violation causes a death or a catastrophic injury, Nevada courts treat the violation as negligence per se — that is, the violation is the negligence, and the case does not require us to prove that the driver was merely “careless.” The violation is the breach; the injury is the damage; the chain is complete.
The vehicle owner. When the wrong-way driver is driving someone else’s car, and the owner knew or should have known that the driver was impaired, unlicensed, inexperienced, or otherwise unfit, the owner can be pulled into the case under a theory called negligent entrustment. The theory is simple: you do not hand the keys to someone you know is a danger behind the wheel. This is how a wrongful-death case can sometimes reach a parent, an employer, a friend, or a rental company that ignored obvious red flags. We investigate the vehicle’s title, the insurance on the vehicle, and the relationship between the driver and the owner in every case.
The commercial establishment that served the alcohol. Nevada’s dram-shop law, codified at NRS 41.1305, is one of the most restrictive in the country. Unlike many other states, Nevada does not impose broad liability on bars, casinos, and restaurants simply because a patron they served later drove drunk. The statute limits liability to two narrow circumstances: when alcohol was furnished to a minor, and when alcohol was furnished to a person who was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of service. Both are fightable, and both are fact-intensive. If the toxicology report shows an extreme blood-alcohol concentration, and if a casino’s own surveillance cameras show the patron stumbling, slurring, or being cut off at one venue before being served at another, we have a case under the “visibly intoxicated” prong. This is the kind of evidence that disappears fastest, which is why the preservation letter goes out the day you call.
The governmental entity that built and maintained the ramp. This is the defendant that surprises most families, and it is the defendant that the UNLV study has just made easier to pursue. The Nevada Department of Transportation owns and operates the off-ramps where wrong-way entries occur. The Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices — the MUTCD — sets the federal standards for wrong-way signage, pavement markings, and ramp geometry that NDOT is required to follow. When an off-ramp has a documented history of wrong-way entries, when the signage falls short of MUTCD standards, when the geometry is confusing, or when NDOT knew of the danger and failed to act, the agency can be sued for negligent roadway design or maintenance. Claims against the State of Nevada and its political subdivisions are governed by NRS 41.035, which caps damages against state entities at $200,000. We will explain that cap in plain English in a moment. The cap is real, and it is small. It does not change the fact that NDOT can be a named defendant — and naming NDOT forces the agency to produce the very records (thermal camera footage, sign-installation logs, prior incident reports, internal memos) that often make the rest of the case provable.
The Legal Architecture: Negligence Per Se, Wrongful Death, and Survival
Let us make the legal vocabulary plain, because the vocabulary is what the other side is going to use against you if you walk in without a lawyer.
Negligence per se means that the defendant’s conduct violated a safety statute, and the violation is treated as the breach of duty. You do not have to argue that the wrong-way driver was being “careless” in some abstract sense. You point to NRS 484B.600, you prove the driver went the wrong way on a divided highway, you prove the violation caused the death or injury, and the legal conclusion of negligence is automatic. This is the foundation of nearly every wrong-way case we file.
Wrongful death is the cause of action that allows the survivors of someone killed by a wrong-way driver to recover damages. In Nevada, that cause of action is created by NRS 41.085, the state’s wrongful-death statute. The statute allows recovery for the loss of financial support the decedent would have provided, the loss of companionship, the loss of services, and the grief and sorrow of the survivors. The damages are real. They are economic (the paychecks that will not arrive, the benefits that will not vest, the tuition that will not be paid) and non-economic (the empty chair at the dinner, the silence in the house, the wedding the parent will not attend). We will get to the math in a moment.
Survival action is the cause of action that recovers damages for the pain, suffering, and fear experienced by the decedent between the moment of impact and the moment of death. It is filed by the personal representative of the estate on behalf of the estate, and it exists because the law recognizes that what a person endures in the seconds and minutes after a violent impact is a real injury, even if the death follows. In a high-speed head-on collision, survival damages are often substantial. We do not minimize them, and we do not let an insurance company minimize them either.
One more piece of architecture, and this is the part that surprises most families. Nevada is a modified comparative negligence state with a 51% bar. That means a plaintiff can recover damages as long as the plaintiff is not more than 50% at fault. If the jury decides the victim was 30% at fault, recovery is reduced by 30% and the family still receives 70% of the damages. If the jury decides the victim was 51% at fault, recovery is barred entirely. In a wrong-way case, the defense will work very hard to push the victim’s percentage above 50% — arguing that the victim should have seen the headlights, should have swerved, should have braked harder. Every percentage point is money. Our job is to keep that number at zero, and to be ready to prove it with physics, with the EDR data, with the thermal camera footage, and with the accident reconstructionist we hire before the defense does.
The Evidence That Disappears Fast: A Race Against the Clock
If you read nothing else on this page, read this section. Evidence in a wrong-way case has a half-life, and the half-life is short. We will say it again: the preservation letter goes out the day you call. Not the day after. Not the week after. The day.
NDOT thermal camera footage. This is the gold. The thermal cameras at the highest-risk off-ramps record the moment the wrong-way vehicle enters the ramp — the direction of travel, the speed, the time, the temperature of the engine block, often the license plate. The footage is preserved on rolling servers, and the standard retention window is short. We have seen footage deleted within 7 to 14 days of an incident in cases where no preservation request was made. The day you call us, we send a litigation hold to NDOT, to the Nevada Highway Patrol, to the Clark County Public Works Department, and to any private entity that operates an off-ramp camera system. We ask for the footage, the sign-maintenance logs, the prior-incident history at that ramp, and the agency’s internal study of the location. We send the letter the same day, by email and by certified mail, and we follow up by phone with the agency’s records custodian within 24 hours. This is not a courtesy request. It is a legal demand, and it is the single most important thing that happens in your case in the first week.
Toxicology reports. The toxicology report on the wrong-way driver establishes the blood-alcohol concentration and the presence (or absence) of drugs at the time of the crash. The report is generated by a law enforcement agency or a contracted laboratory, and it is preserved as part of the criminal case. If the wrong-way driver was charged with DUI or vehicular manslaughter, the toxicology report is the centerpiece of the criminal file. We obtain it through a subpoena, and we obtain it early — because criminal cases can resolve quickly, and the records can become harder to reach once the criminal case is closed. Toxicology often tells the jury everything it needs to know: this was not a confused tourist. This was a person who chose to drive after drinking, or after using, at a level that made driving a смертный weapon.
The Event Data Recorder (EDR). Modern passenger vehicles carry a black box that records speed, braking input, steering input, throttle position, and airbag-deployment timing in the seconds before a crash. The EDR is in your loved one’s car. It is also in the wrong-way driver’s car. Both EDRs need to be downloaded, and both EDRs need to be downloaded by a qualified engineer with a recognized tool. The window is short. Insurance companies move fast to total the vehicles and send them to salvage, and once a vehicle is crushed, the EDR data is gone forever. The day you call us, we send a preservation letter to every insurance company involved, we request the vehicles be held, and we retain an accident reconstruction engineer to download the EDRs before they can be “serviced” or “repaired.”
Cell phone records. Distracted driving is a leading cause of wrong-way entries. A driver looking at a phone at the moment they pass a “Do Not Enter” sign and a “Wrong Way” sign is a driver whose phone records we can obtain. The records are held by the carrier, and they require a preservation letter followed by a subpoena or a court order. The carrier’s own retention policy is the clock — most carriers keep detailed location and usage records for a defined window, after which the records are purged. We send the preservation letter within days, not weeks.
The 911 call, the dispatch log, and the officer’s body cam. The 911 call that reported the wrong-way vehicle — often from a witness who saw the headlights coming — is in the dispatch system. The officer who responded was likely wearing a body camera, and the body camera may have captured the scene, the lighting, the lack of signage, the driver’s statements at the scene, and the victim’s vehicle in its final position. We subpoena all of it.
NDOT’s internal records of the ramp. This is where the UNLV study becomes part of the discovery. We request NDOT’s prior-incident logs for the specific off-ramp. We request the sign-installation and maintenance records. We request any internal studies, traffic counts, or safety audits performed at the location in the years before the crash. If NDOT was on notice of repeated wrong-way entries at that ramp and did not act, that is the foundation of a negligent-design claim — and it is exactly what NRS 41.035 was written to allow, even with the damages cap.
“NRS 484B.600 — Driving on divided highway; crossover; wrong-way driving.” Under Nevada law, a driver who enters a divided highway against the direction of traffic is operating in violation of the rules of the road, and that violation is treated as negligence per se when it causes a death or a catastrophic injury. The statute is short. The chain it builds in a courtroom is long.
The Insurance-Company Playbook: Four Plays and How to Beat Each One
We will tell you what the other side is going to do, because knowing the play is half of beating it. Lupe Peña, the trial lawyer who leads much of the insurance-warfare work on our team, came to us from a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where these strategies were built. We are going to use what he knows.
Play 1 — The friendly “just checking in” call. Within days of the crash, sometimes within hours, a representative of the wrong-way driver’s insurance company will call you. The caller will be warm, sympathetic, and patient. The caller will say he or she is “just calling to see how everyone is doing” and will ask you to “walk through what happened” so the company can “get a full picture.” The call is being recorded. The call is being transcribed. The call is engineered to get you to say things that can be used against you later — that you “feel okay,” that your loved one “had a little trouble seeing at night,” that the witness was “kind of far away.” The counter is simple: do not give the recorded statement. Tell the caller, politely, that you have retained counsel, and that all future contact should go through your attorney. We will then take over the conversation, and we will not let an adjuster build a transcript at your kitchen table.
Play 2 — The fast check with a release attached. Within weeks — sometimes before the toxicology is back, before the medical records are complete, before the full extent of the injury is known — a settlement offer will arrive. The number will be presented as fair, as “the maximum the policy will allow,” and as something the family should accept before the bills pile up. The check will come with a release — a one-page document that, once signed, ends the family’s right to seek any further compensation, no matter what the medical future holds. The counter is also simple: do not sign the release, do not deposit the check (or if you do, do not cash it as full and final payment), and call us before the offer expires. We have seen offers double and triple once the adjuster learns that the family has counsel and that the preservation letter has already gone out.
Play 3 — The comparative-fault shuffle. This is the most dangerous play, because it is invisible. The adjuster will not tell you they are doing it. The adjuster will simply build a file that emphasizes the victim’s speed, the victim’s distance from the centerline, the victim’s failure to take evasive action, the victim’s vision, the victim’s phone use. The adjuster will take recorded statements from witnesses who saw the headlights but did not see the impact. The adjuster will commission a biomechanical report that argues the victim could have survived if the victim had been wearing a seatbelt, or had not been wearing a seatbelt, or had been in a different car. The counter is to build the record first: the EDR, the thermal camera, the accident reconstruction, the toxicology, the witness statements taken while memories are fresh. By the time the defense builds its comparative-fault narrative, we want our own narrative already on paper, in deposition, in front of a jury if necessary.
Play 4 — The delay. There is a fourth play, and we will name it because it is the one that costs families the most: silence. Some insurance companies will simply fail to return calls, fail to make an offer, and let the statute of limitations tick. The defense is hoping that a grieving family will not have the energy to push. The counter is to put the carrier on a written schedule, to file the case in the appropriate Nevada court before the limitations period runs, and to use the pressure of a filed complaint to bring the carrier back to the table.
What Your Case Is Worth: Damages in a Nevada Wrongful-Death Case
Money is not why you are reading this page. Money is also not nothing — money is the only mechanism the civil-justice system has to make your family whole, to hold the wrong-way driver accountable, to fund the medical and therapeutic care that a survivor of a catastrophic injury will need for the rest of their life, and to send a message to the next wrong-way driver that the road is not a place where this behavior is free.
Nevada law allows recovery for the following categories of damages in a wrongful-death case brought under NRS 41.085:
Economic damages are the dollars with receipts. They include the medical expenses incurred before death, the funeral and burial expenses, the loss of the decedent’s future earnings and benefits, the loss of the decedent’s services to the family (childcare, household maintenance, financial management), and the loss of any inheritance the survivors would reasonably have expected to receive. We work with economists and vocational experts to put a number on each component, and we work with the family’s tax returns, pay stubs, employment records, and benefits summaries to support the number with documents the jury can hold in their hands.
Non-economic damages are the dollars without receipts. They include the loss of companionship, the loss of consortium (the spousal relationship), the loss of parental guidance, the grief and sorrow of the survivors, and the loss of the decedent’s love and society. Juries in Nevada are not shy about returning substantial non-economic verdicts in catastrophic cases, and the absence of a general cap on non-economic damages in standard motor-vehicle torts (the cap applies to medical malpractice, not to a vehicular death) is one of the reasons Nevada remains a forum where these cases can be fully tried. We will not promise you a number. We will tell you what the evidence supports, and we will let the jury do its job.
Punitive damages are the dollars with a message. Under NRS 42.005, punitive damages are available in Nevada when the defendant has acted with malice, and Nevada law has long held that extreme intoxication — particularly a blood-alcohol concentration at or above 0.08, the legal limit for driving — can be argued as evidence of the conscious disregard that supports a punitive award. Punitive damages are not automatic. They are not guaranteed. They are, however, a real and proper remedy in cases where the wrong-way driver got behind the wheel knowing the risk, and we pursue them when the evidence supports the pursuit.
The case-value range we work with. A wrong-way case that resolves at the policy minimums and at the $200,000 sovereign-immunity cap for the state-entity portion may settle in the low-to-mid six figures. A catastrophic brain injury, a wrongful death of a primary breadwinner, or a case with high policy limits and a strong punitive posture can resolve in the seven figures and, in the right case, into eight figures. The range we will discuss with you in a free consultation is informed by the specific facts of your case — the age and earning capacity of the decedent, the strength of the liability evidence, the available insurance, and the venue. We will give you a candid range, not a sales pitch. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Physics: Why a Head-On Collision Is the Worst Case
A wrong-way head-on collision is not a “fender bender with extra steps.” It is a physics event with predictable consequences, and the physics is part of the damages case. Two vehicles of similar mass, each traveling at highway speed, meet closing at twice the speed of either vehicle. The energy released in the impact is not the sum of the two speeds — it is the square of the closing speed. A vehicle traveling 65 mph meeting a vehicle traveling 65 mph the wrong direction closes at 130 mph. The forces on the occupants of both vehicles are roughly four times what they would be in a single-vehicle crash at 65 mph. The human body was not designed to absorb those forces, and the injuries reflect the reality: traumatic brain injury, diffuse axonal injury, facial fractures, cervical-spine fractures, thoracic crush injuries, aortic dissections, pelvic fractures, and lower-extremity destruction are the rule, not the exception, in a high-speed head-on impact.
This matters to your case in two ways. First, the injury profile is catastrophic, and catastrophic injuries produce decades of medical and life-care costs that a jury must understand. We retain life-care planners, economists, and vocational experts to put a number on the future — the surgeries, the therapies, the in-home care, the lost earning capacity, the modifications to the home, the wheelchair-accessible vehicle, the round-the-clock attendant care. Second, the physics makes the comparative-fault defense much harder to sell. A jury that understands the closing speed and the force of the impact understands that the victim had no realistic chance to swerve, no realistic chance to brake in time, and no realistic chance to do anything other than be in the wrong place when the wrong-way driver came through. The physics is your friend, and we put it in front of the jury early.
If the State Itself Failed You: The Sovereign Immunity Cap and Why We Still Sue NDOT
Nevada Revised Statutes 41.035 caps damages against the State of Nevada and its political subdivisions at $200,000. That number is small. It is also not a reason to leave NDOT out of the case. Here is why.
First, naming NDOT forces production. NDOT’s thermal camera footage, NDOT’s sign-installation logs, NDOT’s prior-incident reports, NDOT’s internal safety studies — including, potentially, the very UNLV study we are discussing on this page — become part of the discovery. The records we get from NDOT often become the records that prove the case against the private defendants. The $200,000 cap is a small price to pay for the file we get in return.
Second, NDOT can be a joint tortfeasor, and joint tortfeasor status changes the comparative-fault math. If NDOT is found even 1% at fault, that 1% goes onto the state’s side of the ledger. Under Nevada’s joint-and-several framework, a defendant found even minimally at fault can be required to pay a disproportionate share of the total damages in the right circumstances. We will not promise you a specific outcome. We will tell you that leaving NDOT out of the case can leave money on the table.
Third, the $200,000 cap is not the only recovery. The private defendants in the case are not subject to the cap, and their exposure is governed by their own insurance and their own assets. A $200,000 recovery from NDOT does not limit a multi-million-dollar recovery from the wrong-way driver.
The First 72 Hours: A Practical Roadmap
If you are reading this page in the hours after a wrong-way crash, this section is for you. If you are reading it later, it is still for you — because the same steps apply, even if the 72-hour window has narrowed.
Hour 0 to Hour 6: Medical first. If anyone is in the hospital, stay with them. Do not sign anything an insurance adjuster hands you at the hospital. Do not give a recorded statement. The bills are not yet the problem. The medical outcome is the problem.
Hour 6 to Hour 24: Stop talking, start documenting. Write down everything you remember about the crash, in your own words, in the order you remember it. Write down what your loved one was doing that day, where they were going, who they spoke to last. Write down the names of every witness you can think of, including the people who stopped to help. Save every photograph, every text, every voicemail, every piece of paper. Do not delete the text messages, even the ones you wish you had not sent.
Day 1: Make the calls. Call the police agency that responded and ask for the report number and the names of the investigating officers. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. We will take it from there. We will send the preservation letters. We will retain the accident reconstructionist. We will handle the recorded-statement refusal. We will coordinate with the personal-representative appointment if a death has occurred.
Day 1 to Day 3: The preservation letters go out. NDOT, the Nevada Highway Patrol, the Clark County Public Works Department, the cell phone carrier, the insurance companies for both vehicles, the at-fault driver’s employer if any, the bar or casino that served the alcohol if the toxicology supports it. We send them all on day one. We follow up on day two. We confirm receipt on day three.
Day 3 to Day 7: The vehicles and the EDRs. We retain an accident reconstruction engineer. We arrange for the EDRs in both vehicles to be downloaded before either vehicle is sent to salvage. The insurance company will want to total the cars quickly. We will not let that happen until the EDR is on our server.
Day 7 to Day 30: The investigation takes shape. The thermal camera footage arrives. The toxicology report is released. The 911 call is transcribed. The witness statements are taken while memories are fresh. The NDOT records start to come in. The first demand letter goes to the at-fault driver’s insurance carrier.
Day 30 to Filing: The decision to file. Most cases resolve before a lawsuit is filed. The ones that do not are usually the ones where the insurance company has miscalculated our willingness to try the case. When we file, we file in the right venue — typically the Nevada district court for the county where the crash occurred (Clark County for the Las Vegas Valley), with the wrongful-death and survival causes of action under NRS 41.085 joined against the wrong-way driver, the vehicle owner where applicable, the commercial establishment where the evidence supports it, and NDOT where the ramp design is at issue.
Nevada’s Wrong-Way Statutes and the Statute of Limitations
Nevada’s statute of limitations for wrongful-death and personal-injury actions gives a family a defined window to file, and that window is two years from the date of death (or two years from the date of injury in a survival case). The clock is unforgiving. It does not pause for grief, and it does not pause for the insurance company to “finish its investigation.” If you are within the window, call us now. If you are outside the window, call us anyway — there are limited exceptions, and we can tell you within ten minutes whether one applies to your case.
The substantive rules that govern your case are the wrongful-death cause of action under NRS 41.085, the rules-of-the-road regime in NRS Chapter 484B (including the wrong-way driving prohibition in NRS 484B.600), the dram-shop limit in NRS 41.1305, the punitive-damages framework in NRS 42.005, and the sovereign-immunity cap in NRS 41.035. Each of these is a weapon in the right case, and each of these is a defense the other side will use in the wrong case. Our job is to know which is which, and to deploy each at the right moment.
Why This Firm, and Why Now
We are not the right firm for every case. We tell our clients that on the first call, because we believe the relationship starts with honesty. We are the right firm for the kind of case the UNLV study is putting in the news — a catastrophic injury or a wrongful death caused by a wrong-way driver, in a venue where the insurance carrier is going to be a serious opponent, in a state where the law gives the family real rights and a real jury. We handle Nevada cases as part of our national trial practice, working with local Nevada counsel where the court requires it, and we carry the docket in-house when the case calls for it.
Ralph Manginello, the firm’s managing partner, has practiced for 27+ years in state and federal court, with a background in journalism that taught him how to take a complicated record and tell the story inside it. He has tried cases in venues that range from Harris County to federal court, and he has spent his career building the kind of record that makes insurance companies take a claim seriously before they decide to take it to trial. He works these cases personally, and he works them with the attention of a lawyer who knows that the family across the table has just lived through the worst day of their life. You can read more about Ralph Manginello’s background on the firm’s site.
Lupe Peña, the trial lawyer who leads much of the insurance-warfare work on our team, came to us from a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their valuation software — the systems that price claims, the IME doctors that discredit them, the surveillance vendors that follow survivors, the reserve-setting algorithms that decide whether to fight or fold — decided how to value cases like yours. He knows the playbook because he used to run it. He now runs it against the other side, in English and in Spanish, with the same fluency he brought to the defense side. For a Nevada family whose first language is Spanish, that fluency is the difference between being told what is happening and being able to participate in the decisions that follow. You can read more about Lupe Peña’s practice on the firm’s site.
We are a contingency firm. You do not pay us a fee unless we recover for you. The fee is 33.33% of the recovery before a trial is necessary and 40% if the case proceeds to trial. We advance the costs of the case — the reconstructionist, the experts, the depositions, the filings — and we are repaid out of the recovery, not out of your pocket. The first consultation is free, and the line is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by a person, not an answering service. We have recovered more than $50,000,000 across our docket, with multi-million-dollar recoveries in trucking wrongful-death cases, brain-injury settlements in the seven figures, and a record of going to trial when going to trial is what the case requires. We are not the right firm for a fender-bender. We are the right firm for the case on this page.
If you want to understand more about how a wrongful-death case or a head-on collision case is built from the first phone call to the final verdict, the firm’s site has a free library of guides and videos that walks you through the process. The video library covers everything from what to do in the first hours after a crash to how contingency fees actually work to what you should never say to an insurance adjuster. We make those resources because families who understand the process make better decisions, and better decisions produce better outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a wrongful-death case in Nevada?
Nevada’s statute of limitations for wrongful-death and personal-injury actions gives a family a defined window to file, and that window is two years from the date of death. The clock is unforgiving. It does not pause for grief, and it does not pause for the insurance company to “finish its investigation.” If you are within the window, call us now. If you are outside the window, call us anyway — there are limited exceptions, and we can tell you within ten minutes whether one applies to your case.
What if the wrong-way driver was killed too?
Wrong-way collisions often kill both drivers, and we get this question from families on a regular basis. The answer depends on insurance. If the wrong-way driver carried liability insurance, that policy is the primary source of recovery for the victim’s family — because the policy follows the driver’s negligence, not the driver’s survival. If the wrong-way driver was uninsured or underinsured, your own uninsured-motorist (UM) and underinsured-motorist (UIM) coverage becomes the recovery. UM/UIM is the most underused coverage on a personal-auto policy, and we will help you understand whether you have it and how to use it. We also investigate whether the dram-shop theory applies — a bar that served the visibly intoxicated driver can be a defendant even if the driver died in the crash.
What if my loved one was a passenger in the wrong-way driver’s car?
This happens more often than families expect, particularly when the wrong-way driver was a friend, a family member, or a co-worker. The legal answer is that the passenger has the same claim as a passenger in any other car: the wrong-way driver was negligent per se under NRS 484B.600, the vehicle owner may be liable for negligent entrustment, and the dram-shop theory applies if alcohol was involved. The emotional answer is harder, and we will not pretend otherwise. We will tell you the truth about the case, and we will let you decide how to proceed.
What if my loved one was partly at fault?
Nevada follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. A plaintiff can recover damages as long as the plaintiff is not more than 50% at fault, and the recovery is reduced by the plaintiff’s percentage. In a wrong-way case, the defense will work hard to assign the victim a percentage — speed, distraction, failure to swerve. Our job is to keep that number at zero, and we do it with the thermal camera footage, the EDR, the accident reconstruction, and the physics. The percentage is not a guess. It is a number we will fight with evidence.
How much does it cost to hire your firm?
You do not pay us a fee unless we recover. The contingency fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. We advance the costs of the case — the reconstructionist, the experts, the depositions, the filings. The first consultation is free. There is no charge to evaluate the case, no charge to send the preservation letters, and no charge to talk to you about whether the case is one we should pursue.
How long will my case take?
It depends. A case with clear liability, full policy limits, and a cooperative carrier can resolve in months. A case with disputed liability, low policy limits, multiple defendants, or a sovereign-immunity component typically takes longer. We will give you a candid timeline at the first meeting, and we will update it as the case develops. We will never let a case sit because the calendar is convenient for us.
What if the crash happened at an off-ramp I think was poorly designed?
That is the question the UNLV study is built to answer. NDOT owns the ramp, the federal MUTCD sets the standard, and the agency’s own records — including the very study we have been discussing — are discoverable. If the ramp had a history of wrong-way entries, if the signage fell short, if the geometry was confusing, NDOT can be a defendant. The recovery from NDOT is capped at $200,000 by NRS 41.035, but the records we get from NDOT are not capped, and they often drive the rest of the case.
Can I afford the experts?
You do not pay the experts. We do, out of our resources, and we are repaid out of the recovery, not out of your pocket. The reconstructionist, the economist, the vocational expert, the life-care planner — these are the people who turn a wrongful death into a number a jury can understand, and we retain the best in the business. If we do not recover, you owe us nothing for the experts.
What if the wrong-way driver was from another state?
It does not matter. Nevada law governs a crash on a Nevada highway, but the wrong-way driver’s home-state insurance policy responds first, and the case is filed in the Nevada court with venue. We handle the out-of-state coordination, the choice-of-law analysis, and the interaction with the home-state carrier.
What if the toxicology comes back and the wrong-way driver was not impaired?
We have seen this. Wrong-way crashes are not always impairment crashes, although the UNLV study confirms that impairment is the leading factor. The other major factor is the older driver, confused by the Spaghetti Bowl, entering the ramp at the wrong angle. In that case, the defendant theory shifts from impairment to negligence — the driver was confused, the driver should not have been driving, the driver should have pulled over, the driver should have asked for directions. The thermal camera, the EDR, and the witness statements are how we prove what the driver was doing, even without a toxicology report.
Will my case go to trial?
Most cases do not. Insurance carriers are businesses, and they make business decisions. When the liability evidence is strong, the damages are documented, and the firm on the other side has a record of going to trial, the carrier usually resolves the case before trial. We prepare every case as if it will go to trial, because that preparation is what creates the pressure to resolve. The decision to try a case is always yours, not ours. We will give you the candid recommendation, and we will support the decision you make.
Do you serve Spanish-speaking families?
Yes. Lupe Peña is a fluent Spanish speaker and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. We have bilingual staff, we can execute every document in Spanish, and we can litigate the case in Spanish where the venue and the court allow. A family whose first language is Spanish has the same rights under Nevada law as a family whose first language is English, and we are built to make those rights real in either language. Hablamos Espanol.
The Call We Hope You Make
If you have read this far, you are doing the work a good family member does after a wrong-way crash — you are trying to understand what comes next, and you are trying to make sure the people who caused this pay for it, in dollars, in accountability, and in the records that make the next wrong-way driver less likely to kill again. We are the trial team that takes these cases. We are the team that sends the preservation letter the day you call, that hires the reconstructionist before the EDR is lost, that files the case in the right venue before the limitations period runs, and that walks into the courtroom prepared to try the case if that is what justice requires.
The call is free. The call is confidential. The call is to a person, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). You can also reach us directly at (713) 528-9070 or by cell at (713) 443-4781, by email at ralph@atty911.com or lupe@atty911.com, or through our website at https://attorney911.com.
We serve families in Nevada wrong-way cases, in Las Vegas head-on collisions, and across the broader wrongful-death and catastrophic-injury practice on which our firm was built. Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña personally review each case, and we are honest with families whose cases are not the right fit for our firm. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can promise is the work — the preservation letters, the experts, the depositions, the trial preparation, and the fight. That work is the same on every case, and it is what your family deserves.
If you are ready, we are ready. Hablamos Espanol. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. 1-888-ATTY-911.