Economic damages sound like the straightforward half of a claim. Bills, payslips, receipts — the part you can add up while the difficult part is argued about.
Nevada’s own description of the category says otherwise. It contains four items, and two of them are not documents anybody holds. They are projections about a future that has not happened yet, built by people whose methods are themselves open to challenge.
In a brain injury case those two items are usually the largest part of the claim, which makes how they are built the question that matters.
Key Takeaways
- Nevada describes economic damages as including “damages for medical treatment, care or custody, loss of earnings and loss of earning capacity.”
- Loss of earnings and loss of earning capacity are separate items in that list, and they are proven differently.
- A life care plan projects future need from the medical evidence. It is a methodology, not an estimate, and it stands or falls on its basis.
- Earning capacity asks what a person could have earned, not what they were earning when the injury happened.
- Nevada applies a per se rule barring evidence of a collateral source of payment “for any purpose,” so who paid the bills does not reduce what the defendant owes.
- This page deals with the calculable side. Pain, suffering and other nonpecuniary loss are a separate category with no formula at all.
What Nevada Includes in the Category
Nevada does supply a definition. Where it lives is worth noting — the professional negligence chapter, not any general damages provision. NRS 41A.007 reads: “‘Economic damages’ includes damages for medical treatment, care or custody, loss of earnings and loss of earning capacity.”
Four items, and the drafting repays attention.
Medical treatment is the part people expect: the cost of care already provided.
Care or custody is broader than treatment and is routinely underclaimed. It reaches the support a person needs rather than the clinical interventions they receive — assistance with daily tasks, supervision, the arrangements a household has to make. In a serious brain injury case this can exceed the medical treatment many times over.
Loss of earnings is income actually lost.
Loss of earning capacity is listed separately from loss of earnings, which is the statute telling you they are not the same thing.
Applied to a motor vehicle or premises claim, that definition is best treated as Nevada’s own account of what belongs in the category — not as a rule that governs such a claim directly.
Earnings and Capacity Are Different Claims
This is the distinction that most affects what a brain injury claim is worth, and it is the one most often collapsed.
Loss of earnings looks backward at money that did not arrive. Wages for time off, a bonus missed, contracts that could not be performed. It is proven with records, and its limits are the limits of the documentation.
Loss of earning capacity asks a different question: what this person was capable of earning, and what they are capable of earning now. It is not a measure of what they were being paid at the moment of the injury.
The difference is practical and it cuts several ways. A person between jobs at the moment of injury still had capacity to lose. A person early in a career had a trajectory rather than merely a salary. And someone restored to their old role on their old pay may have lost capacity all the same, if the overtime, the promotion or the sustained hours that role led toward are now out of reach.
A claim that presents only lost earnings in a case involving lasting impairment is claiming the smaller of the two things the statute names.
How a Life Care Plan Is Built
A life care plan is the document that establishes future need. It is often described as an estimate, which understates what it is and what it has to survive.
The method runs in a sequence. It begins with the medical evidence about the injury and its expected course, because nothing in the plan can rest on anything else. From that it identifies what the person will need and for how long — treatment, therapies, equipment and its replacement cycles, home adaptation, assistance of the kind NRS 41A.007 calls care or custody. Each item is then costed by reference to what that item actually costs, and the whole is projected across the period the medical evidence supports.
Two things follow from that sequence. The plan is only as strong as the medical foundation under it, which is why the opinion about permanence is load-bearing for the entire economic claim. And every item in it is individually contestable: the need, the frequency, the duration, the cost.
A plan that cannot explain where each item came from is not a plan. It is a total.
How Earning Capacity Is Assessed
Capacity evidence is built from two directions that have to meet.
The first establishes what the person can still do. That rests on the medical and functional evidence about the limitation and whether it is expected to persist.
The second establishes what that means economically: the work the person was doing or heading toward, what that path pays over a working life, what remains open to them now, and the difference between the two. Where the injury affects the capacity to work reliably rather than the ability to perform a task, that distinction has to be made explicit, because a person who can do the job but cannot be depended upon to do it has lost something the job record may not yet show.
Both strands are expert territory. Nevada’s rules let an expert testify where specialist knowledge would help the trier of fact resolve something, and the proof mechanics behind that sit on our Nevada brain injury page.
The Rule That Surprises People
The common assumption is that a defendant only owes what the injured person was actually out of pocket, so a bill covered by health insurance is a bill nobody has to pay again. Nevada rejects that.
In Khoury v. Seastrand, 132 Nev. 520 (2016), the Nevada Supreme Court set out the rule: “if an injured party received some compensation for his injuries from a source wholly independent of the tortfeasor, such payment should not be deducted from the damages which the plaintiff would otherwise collect from the tortfeasor,” citing Proctor v. Castelletti, 112 Nev. 88, 911 P.2d 853 (1996).
Nevada goes further than the principle itself. The court described Nevada as applying “a per se rule barring the admission of a collateral source of payment for an injury into evidence for any purpose.”
Those last four words carry the weight. Some jurisdictions exclude collateral source evidence from the damages calculation but allow it in for limited purposes. Nevada’s rule, as stated, is a bar on admission for any purpose at all.
The practical consequence is that the existence of health coverage does not shrink the claim and is not something a defendant may put in front of the jury.
What Still Comes Out
The collateral source rule governs what a defendant owes. It does not govern what happens to money once it is recovered.
Those who paid for treatment may have rights of reimbursement against a recovery, and attorney’s fees and case costs are resolved out of it as separate items. None of that reduces what the claim is worth. It affects what reaches the injured person, which is a different question and is dealt with on our page on Nevada personal injury claims.
Talk to a Nevada Brain Injury Lawyer
Vaksman Khalfin, PC acts for injured people across Nevada from the firm’s Las Vegas office at 10161 Park Run Drive, Suite 150. The first consultation is free, and injury claims are handled on a contingency-fee basis: there is no upfront cost, attorney’s fees are owed only out of a recovery, and fees and case costs are separate items set out in the written agreement. Wider material sits in the Nevada personal injury guides.
Reviewed by Robert B. Vaksman, Partner, Vaksman Khalfin, PC (admitted in Nevada). Last reviewed: 10/26/2026
Frequently Asked Questions
NRS 41A.007 describes the category as including damages for medical treatment, care or custody, loss of earnings and loss of earning capacity. The last two are listed separately because they are different claims.
Lost earnings is income that did not arrive and is proven with records. Lost earning capacity is what a person was capable of earning compared with what they are capable of earning now, which is not the same as what they were being paid when injured.
A document establishing future need, built from the medical evidence about the injury and its expected course, identifying what will be required and for how long, and costing each item individually.
From the medical foundation outward: the expected course of the injury, then the treatment, therapies, equipment, adaptation and assistance that course implies, then the cost and replacement cycle of each item, then projection over the period the medical evidence supports.
Not to what the defendant owes. Under the collateral source rule as stated in Khoury v. Seastrand, compensation from a source wholly independent of the tortfeasor is not deducted from the damages recoverable from them.
Nevada was described in Khoury as applying a per se rule barring admission of a collateral source of payment for any purpose. How that applies in a given case is a question for the court on its facts.
Specialists whose methods have to be explicable: those who build the life care plan from the medical evidence, and those who assess earning capacity and project it across a working life. Each item they produce is individually contestable.
Returning to work does not close the earning capacity claim. A person who can perform the job but can no longer sustain the hours, the overtime or the progression the role would have led to has lost capacity, and the job record may not show it.
