§ 25-901.Offer of judgment before trial; procedure; effect.

Section 25-901 is Nebraska’s own version of a settlement-pressure tool familiar from federal practice: the offer of judgment. In an action for the recovery of money only, the defendant may, at any time before trial, serve on the plaintiff or the plaintiff’s attorney a written offer to allow judgment to be taken against the defendant for a specified sum. The plaintiff has five days after service to accept and give notice of acceptance. Once that happens, either side can file the offer and acceptance — the plaintiff with an affidavit that notice was delivered in time, or the defendant with a verified copy of the offer — and the court enters the offer and acceptance on the record and renders judgment accordingly.

Timing matters. If the plaintiff does not give notice of acceptance within the five-day window, the offer is deemed withdrawn, and it cannot be introduced into evidence or even mentioned at trial.

The real teeth of the section come at the end: if the plaintiff goes to trial and fails to obtain a judgment for more than what the defendant offered, the plaintiff must pay the defendant’s costs from the time of the offer forward. That risk gives a plaintiff a real reason to weigh an offer carefully rather than reject it reflexively.

The mechanism works much like the offer of judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68 — it pressures a plaintiff to accept a reasonable settlement figure or risk paying costs later — though under Nebraska’s statute only a defendant in a money-only action may make the offer, and it runs only in the defendant’s favor.