Filing a car accident lawsuit in Nebraska

If you were hurt in a crash on I-80, in Omaha rush hour, or on a two-lane road out in the Sandhills, Nebraska law sets specific rules for when you can sue, how much fault you can carry and still recover, and what money is actually on the table. Several of those rules break from what neighboring states do. Here is what is true in Nebraska.

You have four years to file

Nebraska gives injured drivers more time than most states. The deadline to sue for a personal injury from a car crash is four years from the date of the collision, under the catch-all limitations provision in Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-207(3).¹ The same four-year clock covers damage to your vehicle and other personal property under § 25-207(2).² Plenty of states cut this off at two years, so Nebraska's window is longer, but it is still a hard wall. File a day late and the court will almost always dismiss the case no matter how strong it is.

One big exception shortens that clock. If your claim is against a city, county, village, or other local government, the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act requires you to file a written claim with the governing body within one year, and to bring any suit within two years, under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 13-919.³ The written claim is a condition you have to meet before you can sue at all. A crash with a county truck or on poorly maintained public property does not get the full four years.

The 50 percent fault bar

This is the rule that decides most Nebraska cases, and it is unforgiving at the edge. Nebraska follows modified comparative negligence under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-21,185.09.⁴ If you share some blame, your award drops by your percentage of fault. Say a jury values your damages at $100,000 and finds you 20 percent responsible; you collect $80,000.

The trap is the cutoff. Under the statute, if your negligence is "equal to or greater than" the total negligence of everyone you are suing, you recover nothing.⁴ Reach 50 percent fault and your recovery goes to zero. That is why the fault fight, who ran the light and who drifted out of their lane, is often worth more than the size of the medical bills. Adjusters know exactly where the 50 percent line sits and work to push your share up to it.

An at-fault state with no PIP

Nebraska has no no-fault insurance law. The driver who caused the crash pays, through their liability insurance, for the injuries and damage they caused. The Nebraska Department of Insurance lists the required coverages and treats medical payments coverage as an optional add-on rather than a mandate.⁵ There is no personal injury protection you have to burn through first and no PIP filing deadline hanging over you. You go after the at-fault driver and their insurer directly.

The coverage you are likely fighting over

Every driver in Nebraska must carry at least 25/50/25: $25,000 for bodily injury to one person, $50,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage, under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-509.⁶ Those limits are low, and a serious injury blows past them fast. A 2025-2026 bill, LB793, would have raised the floor to 50/100/50 in 2027, but the Legislature indefinitely postponed it on April 17, 2026, so 25/50/25 is still the law.⁶

That gap is why uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage matters so much here. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 44-6408 requires every auto policy issued in Nebraska to include UM/UIM coverage at $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident, and the statute does not let a driver reject it outright.⁷ You can ask in writing for higher limits, up to $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident.⁷ If the driver who hit you had no insurance or nowhere near enough, your own UM/UIM coverage is often the line between a real recovery and a judgment you can never collect.

What your case can and cannot recover

Nebraska puts no cap on compensatory damages in an ordinary car crash claim. Medical bills, lost wages, future care, and pain and suffering are all recoverable in full on the evidence. The $2.25 million figure people sometimes cite comes from the Hospital-Medical Liability Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 44-2825, and applies only to medical malpractice, not to car wrecks.

Nebraska is also one of a small group of states that bars punitive damages completely. The Nebraska Supreme Court reads Article VII, § 5 of the state constitution, which channels all fines and penalties into the school fund, to forbid punitive awards, a rule it laid out in Miller v. Kingsley, 194 Neb. 123, 230 N.W.2d 472 (1975).⁸ Even against a drunk or reckless driver, you cannot ask a Nebraska jury for punitive money. Your bargaining power comes from proving the full weight of your real losses, not from punishment.

That same constitutional bar reaches related theories. Nebraska's dram shop statute, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 53-404, lets an injured person sue a bar or store only for serving a minor, not for overserving an already-drunk adult.⁹ If an intoxicated adult driver hit you, your claim runs against that driver, not the bar that kept pouring.

Building the case: evidence and the crash report

Fault is won or lost on evidence, and two Nebraska details are worth knowing. The first is distracted driving. Nebraska bans reading, typing, or sending a text on a handheld device while driving under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,179.01, but only as a secondary offense, so police can cite it only after stopping the driver for something else.¹⁰ Fines run from $200 for a first offense to $500 for a third.¹⁰ A texting citation, or phone records showing use at the moment of impact, can be strong proof of the other driver's negligence even though the ban itself is secondary.

The second is the police crash report. In Nebraska the investigating officer's report is the public one, while the driver's own crash report stays confidential, per the Nebraska Department of Transportation.¹¹ That officer's report, with its diagram, statements, and any citations issued, usually anchors the whole claim. You can pull a Nebraska crash report through the state's process.

If your vehicle was totaled or lost resale value after the repairs, that is a separate property claim with its own rules on diminished value in Nebraska.

Where the case is filed and getting help

Most Nebraska injury suits are filed in the district court for the county where the crash happened or where the defendant lives, with smaller claims heard in county court. The four-year clock, the 50 percent bar, and the fault investigation all move faster than people expect, and the at-fault insurer starts shaping its version of events from the first phone call. If you are weighing a claim, you can find a Nebraska attorney through the legal directory.

This is general information about Nebraska law, not legal advice for your specific situation.

Sources

1. Nebraska Legislature, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-207. https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=25-207

2. Nebraska Legislature, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-207(2). https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=25-207

3. Nebraska Legislature, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 13-919 (Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act). https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=13-919

4. Nebraska Legislature, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-21,185.09. https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=25-21,185.09

5. Nebraska Department of Insurance, Important Auto Insurance and Types of Coverage. https://doi.nebraska.gov/important-auto-insurance-and-types-coverage

6. Nebraska Legislature, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-509. https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=60-509

7. Nebraska Legislature, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 44-6408. https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=44-6408

8. Nebraska Legislature, Neb. Const. art. VII, § 5. https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/articles.php?article=VII-5

9. Nebraska Legislature, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 53-404. https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=53-404

10. Nebraska Legislature, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,179.01. https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=60-6,179.01

11. Nebraska Department of Transportation, Crash Reporting. https://dot.nebraska.gov/safety/crash-reporting/