New York Car Accidents Lawyer

Insurance Law §5102(d) lists the injury categories that unlock a lawsuit for pain and suffering. The ones that matter in practice:

• Fracture — any documented break qualifies, full stop. This is the cleanest category.
• Significant disfigurement — scarring a reasonable person would find unattractive or objectionable.
• Permanent consequential limitation of a body organ or member, or significant limitation of a body function or system — these require objective medical proof (range-of-motion deficits measured with instruments, positive MRI findings), not just a doctor writing "patient reports pain."
• The 90/180 rule — a medically determined injury that prevented you from performing substantially all of your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the first 180 days after the crash.

Defense firms move for summary judgment on the threshold in a large share of cases, and they win when treatment records have gaps. The single most damaging thing an injured person can do is stop treating because they "toughed it out" — a treatment gap reads, to a judge, as recovery. Consistent, documented care is both good medicine and the evidence the statute demands.

New York follows pure comparative fault (CPLR §1411): your recovery is reduced by your share of the blame but never eliminated. A driver found 40% at fault still recovers 60% of their damages. Adjusters use this aggressively — the recorded statement they ask for in the first week is largely a hunt for admissions that raise your percentage. You are under no obligation to give one to the other driver's carrier, and you should not before speaking with counsel.

The other lever is coverage. New York's minimum bodily-injury liability limit is $25,000 per person — often far below the value of a real injury. We look for every layer above it: the driver's umbrella policy, an employer's policy if the driver was working, and your own SUM (supplementary uninsured/underinsured motorist) coverage, which many New York drivers carry without knowing it. SUM claims have their own notice requirements, so they need to be opened early, not after the liability policy proves too small.

• 30 days — no-fault application (NF-2) to the insurer.
• 90 days — notice of claim under General Municipal Law §50-e if a city vehicle, bus, or other public entity was involved. This one is unforgiving and applies far more often than people expect in New York.
• 3 years — lawsuit against a private driver (CPLR §214(5)), filed in the New York State Supreme Court for the county where the accident occurred for the county where the accident occurred crashes.
• 2 years — wrongful death, measured from the date of death (EPTL §5-4.1).

Evidence has its own clock. Intersection and dashcam footage is routinely overwritten in days; vehicle event-data-recorder downloads require the vehicle before it is repaired or scrapped. A preservation letter in week one is worth more than a subpoena in month six.