If you’re asking, “Can I still file a claim with an old injury before my fall?”, the short answer is yes. Nevada law doesn’t require a perfect body before a fall. If a property owner’s hazard caused your fall and the fall hurt you, or made an old injury worse, you can pursue a claim for that harm.
What most people don’t expect is how the store’s insurance company will use your history. It won’t stop at “you were already hurt.” It will also argue that your old injury is the reason you fell. That’s a blame argument, and it’s built to cut your claim down or erase it. Here’s how both arguments work, and how a Las Vegas slip and fall claim survives them.
Yes, an Old Injury Before Your Fall Doesn’t Cancel Your Claim in Nevada
The law calls this an aggravation of a pre-existing condition. You can’t recover for pain or limits you already had. You can recover for what the fall added: a new injury, or an old one made worse.
A related rule says the at-fault party takes you as they find you. If an old injury made your body more fragile, a property owner can’t argue they should pay less just because a healthier person would have walked away. They’re responsible for the harm their hazard actually caused to you.
This comes up constantly in falls, because falls land on the joints people have already hurt:
- A knee replacement that was doing fine until you went down on a wet floor
- An old lower-back injury that flared into months of treatment after a fall in a parking lot
- An arthritic hip that went from “manageable” to needing surgery
- A wrist you broke years ago that broke again when you caught yourself
In each case, the claim isn’t about the old injury. It’s about the change.
The Two Ways They’ll Use Your Old Injury Against You
Glen Howard spent years as an insurance defense attorney before he started representing injured people. He knows this defense from the inside. In a fall case, the insurer usually runs it on two tracks at once.
“Your Bad Knee Caused the Fall, Not Our Floor”
This is the fault attack, and it’s the one that catches people off guard. The insurer points to your history (a bad knee, a back problem, balance issues, a cane) and argues your body gave out on its own. The spilled liquid or broken tile, they’ll say, had nothing to do with it.
Having a prior injury isn’t careless. Every Nevada property owner owes reasonable care to the people lawfully on their property, and that includes customers who walk with a limp or use a cane. The real question is still what made you fall, and whether you acted reasonably for your own safety.
Why the insurer pushes this so hard comes down to Nevada’s comparative fault rule. Your compensation is reduced by your share of fault. If you’re found more than 50% at fault, you recover nothing. So if the defense convinces an adjuster or a jury that your knee was the main cause, your claim can shrink or disappear. Our guide to how comparative negligence works in Nevada walks through the percentages.
One more point works in your favor. If you weren’t at fault at all, and more than one party caused the hazard (say, a store and its cleaning contractor), Nevada law generally lets you collect the full award from any one of them.
“You Were Already Hurt”
This is the damages attack. Even if they accept that the hazard caused the fall, the insurer will argue your pain, MRI findings and treatment all trace back to the old injury. The fall, they’ll say, changed nothing.
When old and new damage overlap, separating them becomes an evidence fight. Whoever has the better records usually wins it.
What Proves the Fall, Not Your History, Did This
Beating both arguments takes the same thing: a clear before-and-after picture, plus proof of the hazard itself.
- Your baseline before the fall. How you were working, walking, sleeping and living in the months before. Treatment notes showing you’d improved, or had stopped treating, are powerful.
- Comparison imaging. An earlier X-ray or MRI next to a new one can show damage that wasn’t there before.
- Your treating doctor’s opinion. A doctor who knows your history and can explain what changed carries real weight.
- How you landed. If you landed on the same knee or hip that was already weak, that connects the fall to the worsening.
- People who knew you before. Coworkers, family and friends can describe what you could do last month that you can’t do now.
- Proof of the hazard. Footage and store records answer the “your knee just gave out” argument directly. Learn how long stores keep surveillance after a fall and whether you can get the store’s inspection logs.
If you slipped in a grocery store in Spring Valley or a restaurant off Sahara, that footage usually exists at first. It doesn’t always last.
Steps to Protect Your Claim if You Had a Prior Injury
Be honest about your history. Tell your doctors and your attorney about every past injury to the same area. The insurer will find your records anyway. If you hid something, they’ll use it to attack your credibility on everything else.
Don’t downplay it at the scene. Comments like “my knee’s always bad” or “I’m a little clumsy” end up in incident reports and get quoted back to you as an admission. Before you put anything in writing, read whether you should sign an incident report after a slip and fall.
Lock in your baseline. Ask your providers for records from before the fall, not just after. Write down what daily tasks changed and when.
Get treated and keep going. Gaps in care let the insurer argue you’d recovered, or that your symptoms belong to the old injury.
Be careful with medical release forms. The store’s insurer may send a broad authorization that opens your whole medical history. Before a lawsuit, you generally don’t have to sign it. Your attorney can provide the records that actually relate to the claim. Here’s more on how to deal with an insurance adjuster.
Talk to a lawyer before giving a recorded statement. Questions about your health history are where the “already hurt” and “your knee caused it” arguments get built.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you sue for a pre-existing injury?
You can’t sue just because you had a pre-existing injury. You can bring a claim when someone else’s negligence made that injury worse or caused a new one. In a fall case, that usually means showing a property owner allowed a dangerous condition they knew about, or should have known about, and that the fall changed your condition. Nevada law treats that worsening as real harm. Your claim covers the difference between where you were before the fall and where you are now: added medical treatment, lost income, and the pain and limits the fall caused. Every case turns on its own records, so a Nevada attorney should look at your before-and-after history early.
Will a pre-existing condition lower my slip and fall settlement?
It can change the math, but it doesn’t automatically lower the value. You aren’t paid for problems you already had. You can be paid for everything the fall added, and a fragile joint or spine sometimes means the fall did more damage, not less. What lowers settlements is weak documentation: missing prior records, gaps in treatment, or statements that blamed your own body. Clear before-and-after evidence makes the aggravation hard to dismiss. There’s no formula or average that applies to every fall. Value depends on the injury, the treatment, and how well the change is proven.
How bad does an injury have to be to make a claim?
Nevada doesn’t set a minimum injury level for a personal injury claim. It’s an at-fault state with no severity threshold to clear. What matters is that the injury is real, documented and connected to the fall. A soft-tissue injury that needs weeks of physical therapy can support a claim. So can an old condition that flared and needed new treatment. Practically, the size of the injury affects whether a claim is worth pursuing and what it’s worth. That’s why getting checked out and following through on treatment matters, even when you think you’ll “walk it off.”
How long after a fall can you file a claim in Nevada?
Most Nevada personal injury claims, including slip and fall cases, have a two-year deadline to file a lawsuit, usually measured from the date of the fall. Miss it, and the claim is generally lost no matter how strong it was. Falls on public property, such as a city sidewalk or a government building, follow different rules, including a cap on damages, so check early. Two years sounds like plenty of time, but the evidence moves much faster. Footage gets recorded over, hazards get cleaned up, and witnesses become hard to find. Starting within days, not months, protects both the deadline and the proof.
Is it ever too late to file an insurance claim?
Yes. Once Nevada’s lawsuit deadline passes (generally two years for an injury), the insurer has little reason to pay, because you can no longer take the claim to court. Insurance claims can also get harder well before that. A long delay lets the insurer argue the injury came from something else, which is especially damaging when you already have a prior injury. If time has passed, don’t assume it’s over. Get your dates and records reviewed now, so you know exactly where your deadline stands.
He Used to Make This Argument for Insurers. Now He Takes It Apart.
If the store’s insurer is already blaming your old injury, you’re facing a defense Glen Howard used to build for the other side. As a former insurance defense attorney licensed in Nevada, he knows which records adjusters dig for, how they frame a prior injury as the “real” cause, and what evidence shuts that down.
Not sure your history leaves you with a case? That’s exactly the question to bring to a Las Vegas slip and fall lawyer before you sign anything or give a statement. Glen will look at your fall, your prior records and the hazard, and tell you honestly where you stand. You pay no fee unless we win.
Call (702) 331-5722 or request your free case review. Learn more about proving a slip and fall claim in Las Vegas and what Glen needs to see first.
