Why You Should File a Damage Claim Against The Nightclub and Not The Assailant

Most nightclubs and bar establishments manage to go most nights without incident as everyone minds their own business to just have a good time. Every now and then however, there will be an unruly individual trying to start trouble with another patron for whatever their reason and they’ll initiate a fight. Depending on the scale of the fight, you could be directly involved in the fight being the person’s primary target of aggression or you could be an innocent bystander who gets injured by a bottle that’s thrown across the room.

In these kinds of cases who is liable and who do you make your claims against?

At Eric Roy Law Firm, clients who work with our personal injury attorney in Las Vegas, NV initially think to sue the aggressor for negligence, but in fact wouldn’t be prudent to sue them in a personal injury case because there’s no insurance policy to siphon from to cover your damages. Even if they had assets, they probably won’t be sufficient to cover your medical bills so overall, it would be a waste of your time and your money to sue them when you’d gain so little in return.

Instead, you’ll want to file a claim against the nightclub or bar itself, there are multiple arguments that a personal injury attorney could make in order to attach negligence on the account of a nightclub usually involving their complicity in producing the conditions in which a fight could successfully exacerbate leading to injuries. The only exception to this is if you entered the fight voluntarily. If cameras are looked over during investigations and it is found that you deliberately entered the fight, then this will then be seen as a “mutual affray” and will be entirely between you and the other aggressor. In order to prove that the nightclub is liable you must prove the following:

Failure to meet duty of care: the establishment has a duty to keep patrons reasonably safe from certain foreseeable harm. When it comes to nightclub and bar safety prevention is the focus as they want to prevent the conditions for a fight from arising. Little things like serving drinks in plastic cups, employing bouncers, and securing tables and chairs to the floor all factor into the prevention of potential fights and injuries.

The failure was the cause of your injury: The negligence of the nightclub or bar must’ve been the cause of your injury. That is you can’t be conveniently injured around the time of the fight by a means completely unrelated to it or be injured in the fight in a manner that can’t be connected to the club at all.