A ballot push for the strictest cap in the country
Starting in 2024, a political action committee called "Nevadans for Fair Recovery" — funded entirely by Uber — pursued a ballot initiative that would have capped contingency fees at 20% across every civil case in Nevada, from personal injury to discrimination and consumer protection claims. At the time, commentators noted this would have been the strictest contingency fee cap in the country, surpassing the two states then known for general civil fee caps: Oklahoma at 50% and Michigan at 33%.
Blocked by Nevada's own Supreme Court
The petition cleared the signature threshold, gathering more than 200,000 signatures — roughly double what was legally required. But opponents, including the Nevada Justice Association and a group called Uber Sexual Assault Survivors for Legal Accountability, challenged its legal sufficiency. On January 27, 2025, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the initiative's description of effect was "misleading and confusing," specifically citing unresolved ambiguity about whether the 20% cap would apply to medical malpractice cases already capped at 35%, or to attorneys representing the State of Nevada under their own separate rules.
Off the table for 2026
The ruling means the measure will not go before the Nevada Legislature or appear on the November 2026 general election ballot, despite the scale of the signature-gathering effort behind it. As of this writing, Nevada's only attorney fee ceilings remain the specific ones already in place: the flat 35% medical malpractice cap and the 25% cap for attorneys contracted to represent the state.
A genuine contrast with states that cap by statute
Where a state like Illinois writes a flat medical malpractice fee cap directly into statute through the ordinary legislative process, Nevada's most significant recent fee-cap fight played out instead through the ballot-initiative process — and was decided not by voters, but by the state's highest court ruling on the clarity of the proposal's own language before it ever reached them.