With a background both in journalism and law, I especially relish reading about local legal matters. But this has gotten to be a problem at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters as the media continue to wither away in Nevada. Some good stuff just doesn’t get covered.

Take the Nevada Supreme Court, based in the geographically remote, named-for-a-war-criminal capital of Carson City. The tribunal generally issues opinions only on Thursdays, and rarely more than five. But as far as I can tell, no reporters cover the court on an urgent regular basis, even though that should be easy, since opinions are immediately posted online and there aren’t all that many of them.

‘Tis a pity. The Nevada Supreme Court is not what I would call an influential state tribunal, like the top courts in California, New York and my native New Jersey, whose decisions are closely read and even heeded around the country. But the seven-member court has a moderately liberal perspective and an interesting jurisprudence that is still evolving. A surprising number of cases concern matters of first impression, in that they involve legal issues that haven’t been decided in Nevada, which for most of its history has been thinly populated with a correspondingly lesser amount of litigation. Laments a online-posted study guide issued by the library of the state’s only law school, at UNLV, “Nevada case research is limited by the fact that there is very little case law available to research.” I find Nevada Supreme Court opinions well-written and reasoned as they sort their way through often-uncharted terrain, and worth reading.

That brings me to a unanimous Nevada Supreme Court decision issued more than a month ago, which from what I can tell has gotten no real attention either in the news media or in legal circles but holds the promise of incredibly wide applicability. It is now the law in the Battle Born State that a hit-and-run accident in a private parking lot where no one is injured is no crime.

Residents and especially tourists, beware.

The Nevada Supreme Court opinion in Urias v. State (No. 88977), issued on May 8, was only 13 pages long and a little light reciting the facts. So much of the background I describe here is based on the 418-page appendix submitted to the Nevada Supreme Court by the defendant.

The caper arose about 3:50 p.m. on September 4, 2022, in the parking lot of the Walmart store at 3200 Market St. in Carson City. Diego Avina, a 19-year-old Carson City man who worked at the Walmart, returned to his parked orange Scion a few hours later to find the front left wheel had been damaged. On the windshield was a handwritten note–not from an errant driver but from a witness, Shane Adams (actually written out by his girlfriend). “Just so you know, I watched a truck hit your driver side front fender,” the time-dated note said, providing the license number and Adams’ contact info. Adams later told an investigating Carson City Sheriff’s deputy the driver didn’t get out of the vehicle and left the scene. The deputy quickly found relevant Walmart security video.

The perp was quickly identified through DMV records as Brandon W. Urias, 24, of Carson City. An arrest warrant was issued on the misdemeanor charge of violating “duty upon damaging unattended vehicle or other property”–failing to stop after a crash, or hit-and-run. But Urias wasn’t picked up for nearly four months, until December 29, 2022, when a different deputy stopped him–apparently in the same vehicle–for going 40 mph in a 25 mph zone. Urias was taken into custody but quickly posted bail and was released. Although the charge was a misdemeanor, a conviction carried a mandatory license revocation.

The hit-and-run case moved slowly. At a hearing on July 31, 2023–nearly a year after the incident–Uriah’s lawyer, Steve E. Evenson of Fallon, Nevada, filed a motion in Carson City Justice Court to dismiss the case on grounds Nevada law did not criminalize non-personal-injury hit-and-run on private property such as a Walmart parking lot, but only on public highways. The local district attorney’s office begged to differ.

Eventually, on November 29, 2023, after a long hearing with witnesses (the transcript is 230 pages long), Carson City Justice of the Peace Thomas Armstrong convicted Urias of misdemeanor hit-and-run. He was ordered to pay $445 in fines, court fees and restitution (for one damaged wheel). Armstrong stayed the sentence pending appeal.  But with that mandatory license revocation looming, Urias’s lawyer, Evenson, appealed, first to the district court covering Carson City. When that was denied, he petitioned the Nevada Supreme Court, where he had much better luck.

East Coast-reared-and-educated Justice Elissa F. Cadish wrote the opinion dated May 8 for a unanimous three-judge panel that didn’t even bother to schedule oral arguments. While Nevada Revised Statutes 484E.040 clearly makes hit-and-run an offense, she wrote, another law, NRS 484A.400, limited its application to highways, which a Walmart parking lot most certainly isn’t. As a result of another one of those Nevada cases of first impression, Urias went free.

Her statutory interpretation opinion, joined by Justices Kristina Pickering and Patricia Lee, had the flavor of a stern high school English class. NRS 484A.400 states that NRS 484E.040, the hit-and-run law, applies to “all highways to which the public has a right of access, to which persons have access as invitees or licensees or such other premises as provided by statute.” Cadish wrote:

Applying general principles of English grammar, the phrase “to which persons have access as invitees or licensees” modifies highways, not “such other premises.” Prepositional phrases usually modify or describe words that syntactically precede them … “Highways” is the nearest preceding noun to the prepositional phrase modifier “to which persons have access as invitees or licensees.” The state’s interpretation of NRS 484A.400 ignores the parallel structure with the preceding prepositional phrase (“to which the public has a right of access”) modifying “highway,” and it is grammatically nonsensical for the second “to which” prepositional phrase to modify a noun phrase (“such other premises”) that follows it.

In a final poke at Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, whose office defended the prosecution, Cadish wrote, “While the State argues that common sense dictates that it should apply to locations such as private parking lots, the legislature did not include any location other than highways in NRS 484E.040, and it is not the court’s role to question the wisdom or justness of a statute.”

Notwithstanding the clear holding of Urias v State, some client-seeking lawyers in Las Vegas still claim in their advertising that non-injury hit-and-run on private property is a crime so you better hire them fast. In her opinion, Justice Cadish said the court decided to hear the case on a fast-track basis because the issue “has broad application throughout the state.” I’ll say, even if the rest of the news media and legal community doesn’t.