A continued effort by an Uber-backed group to cap attorney’s fees — despite a state Supreme Court ruling against its ballot initiative — is showing up around Nevada in the form of a large-scale advertising campaign.
Digital and billboard advertisements around Las Vegas, Reno and Carson City rail against “greedy lawyers” and “lawsuit abuse,” the subject of a ballot initiative that gained more than 206,000 signatures in 2024.
Nevadans For Fair Recovery, a political action committee that brought the petition initiative to cap attorney fees in civil cases at 20 percent, was behind the ballot effort. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Jan. 27 that the initiative’s description was “misleading and confusing.”
The decision prevented the initiative from going to the Nevada Legislature for consideration during the 2025 session or from going to voters in the 2026 general election. About a week after in early February, the group turned its funding toward a media blitz.
Spokesperson Karen Griffin said the open-ended campaign reflects that the group is “back to square one” after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Griffin said the group will watch how the Legislature takes up the issue, if at all.
“We’re really committed to this issue and committed to continuing to fund it moving forward,” Griffin said. “Because ultimately, the insurance industry is in crisis. It’s at the root of the problem, and we have a system in Nevada that incentivizes and sanctions legal abuse in a lot of ways.”
Nevadans for Fair Recovery argues excessive attorney’s fees from “billboard attorneys” eat into settlements for plaintiffs and drive up the costs of everyday goods, services and insurance rates. The petition’s opponents contend Uber was trying to make it easier for the company, and others like it, to hire expensive defense attorneys to fight lawsuits while limiting citizen’s abilities to find legal representation.
That’s because contingency fees in civil cases — which are currently not capped in most cases — tie the cost of the attorney’s services to the results of the case. Civil plaintiffs’ attorneys say a cap could discourage attorneys from taking smaller cases or force some firms to switch to an hourly rate model.
Reform efforts elsewhere
Nevadans for Fair Recovery’s sole supporter is Uber. The San Francisco-based ridesharing company poured $5 million into the PAC last year, according to campaign finance reports, and the company has seven paid lobbyists registered for this legislative session.
Nevada is not the only state where Uber is pushing insurance and legal reforms. The company launched a million-dollar ad campaign in California, Georgia, Nevada and New York, according to Sacramento-based TV station KTXL.
Attorney Deepak Gupta, who represented Uber Sexual Assault Survivors for Legal Accountability and the Nevada Justice Association, said the campaign likely reflects the company’s broader effort to change legal and insurance laws. He said they believe Uber sees Nevada as “a testing ground” for policy reform.
“It continues to be troubling, because they are pushing a proposal that would be the most extreme limit on access to the civil justice system in the country but attempting to portray it as something very different,” Gupta said. “And it’s no surprise why they’re doing this. It’s been a moment when this company faces thousands of sexual assault claims.”
Justin Watkins, a partner at Battle Born Injury Lawyers and a non-paid lobbyist for the Nevada Justice Association, said he was surprised to see the media campaign.
“I’m confused as to their continuous effort, to be honest with you, to apply pressure to the Legislature to change laws or to complain about laws that they themselves wrote,” Watkins said, referring to ridesharing regulations set in the 2015 legislative session. “I’m up here in Carson City right now, and there is no proposal from Uber or anybody else to change the structure of the laws that they themselves wrote and are complaining about in these media campaigns.”
Nevada Justice Association has 11 paid and 13 non-paid lobbyists registered during this session, legislative reports show.
Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.
A recent Review-Journal letter to the editor mischaracterized Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, also known as the Clark County Lands bill. As the former executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, I wholeheartedly support this legislation, so I wanted to set the record straight.
Sen. Cortez Masto has been working on this bill for years in partnership with state and local governments, conservation groups like the NCL and local area tribes. It’s true that the Clark County lands bill would open 25,000 acres to help Las Vegas grow responsibly, while setting aside 2 million acres for conservation. It would also help create more affordable housing throughout the valley while ensuring our treasured public spaces can be preserved for generations to come.
What is not correct is that the money from these land sales would go to the federal government’s coffers. In fact, the opposite is true.
The 1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act is a landmark bill that identified specific public land for future sale and created a special account ensuring all land sale revenues would come back to Nevada. In accordance with that law 5 percent of revenue from land transfers goes to the state of Nevada for general education purposes, 10 percent goes to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for needed water infrastructure and 85 percent supports conservation and environmental mitigation projects in Southern Nevada. This legislation has provided billions to Clark County and will continue to benefit generations of Southern Nevadans. Sen. Cortez Masto’s lands bill builds upon the act’s success.
So here’s the good news: All of the money generated from land made available for sale under Sen. Cortez Masto’s bill would be sent to the special account created by the 1998 law. Rather than going to an unaccountable federal government, the proceeds would continue to help kids in Vegas get a better education, bolster outdoor recreation and modernize Southern Nevada’s infrastructure.
I know how important it is that money generated from the sale of public land in Nevada stay in the hands of Nevadans, and so does the senator. That’s why she opposed a Republican effort last year to sell off 200,000 acres of land in Clark County and other areas of the country that would have sent those dollars directly to Washington.
Public land management in Nevada should benefit Nevadans. We should protect sacred cultural sites and beloved recreation spaces, responsibly transfer land for affordable housing when needed and ensure our state has the resources it needs to grow sustainably. I will continue working with Sen. Cortez Masto to advocate for legislation, such as the Clark County lands bill, that puts the needs of Nevadans first.
Paul Selberg writes from Las Vegas.
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Las Vegas High’s baseball team claimed a 3-2 home win over Coronado on Friday.
Las Vegas (9-13-1) next hosts Rancho at 10 a.m. Saturday. Coronado (13-14) hosts Chaparral at 3:30 p.m. Monday.
Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Nevada’s jobless rate is holding steady, but the state is still adding jobs.
A new report from DETR shows February’s unemployment rate unchanged at 5.3 percent, with the labor force growing by nearly 3,800 people.
MORE ON FOX5: Nevada unemployment rate rises to 5.3% in January
Nevada now has about 1.6 million nonfarm jobs, up 2.2 percent over the past year and 1,500 more jobs than in January.
“This month’s report shows a strengthening labor market,” said David Schmidt, Chief Economist. ”Compared to the report for January, the pace of job gains in the past year increased from 1.9% to 2.2%, building on what was already the fastest pace of job growth in the country. While the unemployment rate remained stable, the labor force participation rate rose to 63.7%, 1.7 percentage points higher than the national level.”
In Las Vegas, employment ticked up by 1,100 jobs in February, about 0.1 percent, and is up more than 25,000 jobs compared to last year.
Reno added 1,000 jobs on the month, while Carson City shed about 200 but is still slightly above where it was a year ago.
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