Does Nebraska Still Have a Guest Statute?

Search for “Nebraska guest statute” and you will find pages, some written by lawyers, explaining that a passenger who rides for free cannot recover from the driver unless the driver was drunk or grossly negligent. That was the law in Nebraska for roughly seventy-five years. It is not the law now. The Legislature repealed the guest statute in 2010, and every passenger in Nebraska — family member, friend, hitchhiker — recovers today on the same showing as anyone else hurt by a negligent driver. This page explains what the statute was, why it mattered so much, what replaced it, and what a passenger actually has to prove in 2026. I include the history because adjusters still cite the old rule, and a passenger who knows it is gone is a passenger who does not get talked out of a claim.

What a Guest Statute Was

Guest statutes were a product of the 1920s and 1930s. As automobiles spread, insurers and legislatures worried about two things: collusion, where a driver and a friendly passenger would agree the driver was at fault so the passenger could collect from the insurer, and what was then called ingratitude — the idea that a person given a free ride should not be able to sue the person who gave it. Roughly half the states enacted laws barring or limiting a “guest” from recovering against the driver for ordinary negligence. Nebraska’s was in force by the mid-1930s; the Nebraska Supreme Court was deciding guest-statute cases in 1935.

What Nebraska’s Statute Said

Nebraska’s version, codified as section 25-21,237, provided in its final form that the owner or operator of a motor vehicle “shall not be liable for any damages to any passenger or person related to such owner or operator as spouse or within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity who is riding in such motor vehicle as a guest or by invitation and not for hire, unless such damage is caused by (1) the driver of such motor vehicle being under the influence of intoxicating liquor or (2) the gross negligence of the owner or operator in the operation of such motor vehicle.”

Three features made it bite. First, by its later years the bar applied to relatives — a spouse, and anyone within the second degree of blood or marriage: parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, and the corresponding in-laws. Earlier versions reached all guests; the Legislature narrowed it to family, which meant the people most likely to be riding together were the people least able to recover. Second, “guest” meant riding by invitation and not for hire — the ordinary family trip. Third, the only ways through were intoxication or gross negligence, which the Nebraska courts defined as great or excessive negligence indicating the absence of even slight care, sometimes described as a persistence in negligence without regard for the consequences. Ordinary carelessness — the momentary inattention, the rolling stop, the misjudged gap that causes most crashes — was not enough.

Who Counted as a “Guest”

The statute reached passengers riding “as a guest or by invitation and not for hire.” Those words generated decades of litigation, because the entire claim turned on them. A passenger who was paying for the ride, or who conferred some tangible benefit on the driver that made the trip a business arrangement rather than a courtesy, was not a guest and could recover for ordinary negligence. A passenger riding purely as a social matter was a guest and could not. Families argued over whether sharing gas money, taking turns driving, or running the driver’s errands took a trip out of the guest category. Courts drew fine lines that no ordinary family could have predicted before the crash, and the outcome for an injured relative depended on distinctions that had nothing to do with how badly they were hurt or how carelessly the driver had driven. That unpredictability was one of the criticisms that eventually carried the repeal.

What “Gross Negligence” Required in Practice

The exception for gross negligence sounds like a door; in practice it was a wall. Nebraska’s courts required proof of great or excessive negligence indicating the absence of even slight care — the sort of driving where a driver persisted in a dangerous course after the danger was obvious, sometimes over a passenger’s protests. The everyday negligence that produces most crashes did not qualify: a driver who looked away for a moment, misjudged a gap, or took a familiar road a little too fast was negligent, but not grossly so, and the family passenger recovered nothing. Whether conduct rose to the level of gross negligence was usually a question for the jury, which meant a family passenger faced a trial on that question alone before ever reaching the question of damages, while the stranger in the other car settled on ordinary negligence months earlier.

What That Meant for Real Families

Consider the crash the statute was written for. A father drives his family to Grand Island for a wedding. He glances at the radio, drifts across the center line, and the resulting collision breaks his wife’s pelvis and his daughter’s arm. Under the guest statute, neither could recover a dollar from his liability policy — the policy he paid for, with limits he chose — because his negligence was ordinary rather than gross. The stranger in the other car could recover in full. The people who loved him could not. Insurers collected the premium and were relieved of the claim. That asymmetry, more than any doctrinal argument, is why the statute was eventually repealed: it did not protect drivers from anything; it protected insurers from the most predictable claims in the book.

The Repeal

In 2010 the Legislature passed LB 216, described in the Unicameral’s own update that January as a proposal extending auto claims to family members, and section 25-21,237 was repealed outright. The Legislature’s statute database now shows the section with a single line: Repealed. Laws 2010, LB 216, § 1. There was no replacement provision, because none was needed, and no grandfather clause preserved the old rule for crashes after the effective date; a family passenger hurt today looks only to ordinary negligence law. Nebraska’s general negligence law, and its comparative fault statute, already governed every other injury claim; the repeal simply let passengers — including relatives — back into that system.

The repeal fit with a change the Legislature had made five years earlier on the insurance side. Section 60-310, enacted in 2005 and strengthened in 2013, forbids an auto liability policy from excluding, limiting or reducing coverage because the injured claimant is the named insured or lives in the insured’s household. Between the two changes, Nebraska closed both routes insurers had used to avoid paying family passengers: the statutory bar on the claim, and the contractual exclusion in the policy. The passenger claims page covers the insurance side in detail.

What a Passenger Must Prove Today

With the statute gone, a passenger’s claim against the driver is an ordinary negligence claim with four elements. The driver owed a duty of reasonable care to everyone on the road, including the people in the car. The driver breached that duty — not with gross negligence, but with the ordinary failures that cause most crashes: inattention, speed for conditions, following too closely, failing to yield. The breach caused the crash. And the crash caused the passenger’s injuries and losses. Where another driver caused the collision, the same four elements apply to that driver instead, and where both share fault, both are liable in proportion.

Proof looks the same as in any crash case: the officer’s report, the physical evidence, the vehicles’ event data, phone records where distraction is suspected, witness accounts and, when it matters, reconstruction. The difference for a passenger is that fault is rarely contested as to the passenger — the arguments are between drivers and insurers, and the passenger’s job is to document the injury.

What Survives: The Arguments Insurers Still Make

Repealing the guest statute did not end insurers’ interest in reducing passenger claims; it moved the arguments into Nebraska’s comparative fault system, which reduces a recovery by the claimant’s own share of fault and bars it at fifty percent. Two arguments recur. The first is that the passenger knowingly rode with an impaired driver — the modern descendant of the statute’s intoxication clause, now framed as the passenger’s own negligence rather than as a bar. Its strength depends on what the passenger actually knew, whether the impairment was apparent, and what alternatives the passenger had; it is an argument, not a rule. The second is seatbelt non-use, which Nebraska law confines to a narrow role: by statute it is inadmissible on liability or proximate cause and may reduce damages by no more than five percent. Neither argument revives the guest statute’s categorical bar, and neither should stop a passenger from making the claim.

A Checklist for Family Passengers Today

Because the repeal removed a bar rather than creating a procedure, the steps for a relative hurt as a passenger are the same as for anyone else, with a few points of emphasis. Get the officer’s report and confirm it lists you as an occupant and identifies the driver’s insurer. Get medical care the same day and describe who was driving; do not soften the account to protect a relative, because the medical record is the foundation of the claim and inconsistencies hurt you, not them. Do not give a recorded statement about the crash to any insurer without advice. Ask the driver to notify their own insurer, which their policy requires, and let them know the claim is against the policy. Find out the liability limits on the driver’s policy and the UM/UIM limits on your own household policy, because when the driver’s limits are inadequate, your own coverage is often the larger part of the recovery. And if anyone — an adjuster, a relative, an old article — tells you the guest statute stands in the way, remember the date: 2010.

Why the Old Rule Still Shows Up

Fifteen years after repeal, the guest statute survives in three places: in the memories of people who learned the rule when it was real, in web pages that were never updated, and in the mouths of adjusters who find it a convenient thing to say to a passenger who does not know better. I have had clients tell me, with total confidence, that they “can’t sue family in Nebraska.” They could, and the policy their family member paid for was waiting to respond. If you are told the guest statute bars your claim, ask for the statute number and look it up; the Legislature’s website will show you the word Repealed.

Crashes in Other States

A Nebraska family hurt in a crash in another state may find the rules differ; a handful of states retain guest-statute limitations in some form, and the law of the place where the crash happened generally governs the driver’s liability. If you were a passenger in a crash outside Nebraska, tell me where, and I will tell you which state’s rule applies before anyone assumes.

Talk to Me Before You Decide Not to Claim

Passengers are the injured people most likely to walk away from a valid claim, and the guest statute’s ghost is one of the reasons. It is gone. A family member, a friend, or anyone else riding in a Nebraska car who is hurt by a driver’s ordinary negligence has the same claim a stranger has, against a policy that was bought to pay it. If you were hurt as a passenger anywhere in Nebraska or western Iowa, call (402) 378-9208 or send a message. The consultation is free and there is no fee unless I recover for you. The Omaha car accident lawyer page describes how I handle the case; the borrowed-car page covers whose policy pays when the driver was not in their own car.

Your Attorney

Frank Younes

Every page on this site is written by Frank Younes, a Nebraska trial attorney with a published record of verdicts and settlements, selection to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100, and a practice that covers every county in Nebraska and Iowa. No case is handed to an associate — the lawyer you read here is the lawyer who works your case.

More about Frank → · Free consultation: (402) 378-9208

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Nebraska still have a guest statute?

No. Section 25-21,237 was repealed by the Legislature in 2010 (Laws 2010, LB 216). Passengers, including relatives, now recover on proof of ordinary negligence.

What did the Nebraska guest statute say?

In its final form it barred a spouse or a relative within the second degree of blood or marriage, riding as a guest and not for hire, from recovering against the owner or operator unless the driver was under the influence of intoxicating liquor or grossly negligent.

What is “gross negligence”?

Nebraska courts defined it under the guest statute as great or excessive negligence indicating the absence of even slight care — a much higher bar than the ordinary negligence a passenger proves today.

Can a family member recover against a relative’s auto policy now?

Yes. The claim is an ordinary negligence claim, and Nebraska separately prohibits auto policies from excluding or reducing coverage because the injured person is the named insured or a household member.

An adjuster told me the guest statute bars my claim. Is that right?

No. The statute has not existed since 2010. Ask for the statute number and check the Legislature’s website, which shows it as repealed.

What must a passenger prove today?

Ordinary negligence: the driver owed a duty of reasonable care, breached it, and the breach caused the crash and the passenger’s injuries. Insurers may argue the passenger shared fault, which Nebraska handles under comparative fault rather than as a bar.