Lawyer Did Not File Within Time Frame For Sol

Location: Nevada

Hi everyone,

I have a feeling there is really no recourse with this situation, but wanted to do my due diligence and ask.

My father passed away in mid-March 2024, the whole thing was a stressful mess and it's honestly even a miracle we made it through probate. However, at the time of his death, I, as his only child and next of kin, was entirely excluded from the funeral planning and general sepulcher rights.

In September of last year, I was finally able to obtain the funeral file that confirmed that they wrongfully allowed someone else to make all decisions in this area. I managed to find a law firm who took this on as a personal injury case against the funeral home for lack of due diligence in finding the authorized agent in January 2026. I was very up front with them about when this occurred and mentioned that I was aware there was a 2y SoL with cases like these. The date of his death and funeral were mentioned in the introductory email, I brought it up in calls, and even filled it out as the date of the incident in the contract I signed with them. I was under the impression that they were fully aware of the deadline.

Frankly, the onboarding for the case took ridiculously long (hugely extended by a few instances of them taking a while to respond + sending the wrong documents, etc.), but all of it was completed before the Statute of Limitations was up.

I also had an understanding that the SoL could've been impacted by a date of discovery (as in when I discovered someone had signed the contract falsely as the authorized agent). This led me to believe that potentially had more time, though I still tried to get this done before the 2y deadline. This has since been explained to me as not true.

Today, I was called by someone at the firm to inform me that they will be giving up my case because the Statute of Limitations had passed. I was honestly shocked, as I thought I had made this deadline clear. They argued that they only received the official funeral contract from me yesterday, but I had this contract the whole time, offered to send it multiple times, and communicated the date on it.

I can't help but feel like they prevented me from pursuing a case that I might have otherwise been handled differently had I known they weren't going to file in time.

I understand there are definitely ways I could've navigated this better like being on top of their filing, but I trusted that they knew what they were doing (and misunderstood the SoL to begin with, leading me to further trust that the timeline was fine). Trust me, I'm running through all the ways in my head as to how I could've gone about this better...but honestly, isn't the point of paying a lawyer the big bucks to trust them to have an accurate understanding of the law and carry out the job on your behalf?

Is there anything I can do at this point? My understanding is that the SoL is cut and dry, and even if the law firm messed up, there's nothing they can do at this point even if they wanted to. But is there really no other recourse? I not only feel that I've lost out on the financial aspect of the case (it was very straightforward case), but I've also lost out on receiving emotional reparations – recognition from the court that what happened to me was, in fact, wrong and shouldn't happen to anyone else.

I'm also kind of writing this post as a sanity check. While, again, I know I could have done certain things differently, I still feel like I did everything I was supposed to do when trusting a firm to carry out a case for me (as in informing them of everything, making sure onboarding was completed before SoL was up, etc.). I genuinely believe they could have filed in time, but just...didn't. Am I wrong to think this was wrong of them? Is there additional context I'm missing?

Thank you to anyone who can provide insight. It's okay if there's no way to amend this, I just want to know.