If you were hurt because someone else was careless in New York City, a personal injury claim is how you recover for what the injury cost you: the medical bills, the lost income, and the pain that may still be getting worse. You did not cause this, and you should not be the one left paying for it.
The insurance company on the other side is already working. It has opened a file, and it is looking for reasons to pay you as little as possible. The evidence that proves what happened, the footage, the records, and the witnesses, can disappear within days. Below are the questions injured people ask our personal injury attorneys most.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
You likely have a case if someone else's carelessness caused your injury. The core of almost every claim is the same: another person or company owed you a duty of reasonable care, failed to meet it, and that failure caused you real harm.
That duty shows up everywhere. A driver owes it to everyone else on the road. A property owner owes it to the people who come onto the property. A contractor owes it to the workers on the site. A product manufacturer owes it to the people who use what it sells. When one of them cuts a corner and you get hurt, the law lets you hold them responsible.
What turns a duty into a case is harm and proof. The injury has to be real, and the connection between the carelessness and the injury has to be shown with evidence. Whether your case is strong is something our personal injury lawyers evaluate at no cost, before you commit to anything.
Our personal injury lawyers represent injured people and the families of people killed across the full range of accident cases in the five boroughs and the surrounding counties. Each area has its own proof, parties, and deadlines.
Serious cases are also organized by the injury itself, including traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, fractures, and burns. If your situation does not fit neatly into one category, that does not mean you have no case. Many serious accidents involve more than one of these at once.
It depends entirely on who caused the injury, and the range is wider than most people expect:
Because it is not always obvious in the first days whether a public agency is involved, the safe move is to have every deadline pinned down early, before the shortest clock runs out.
Then the case runs on the short track. A formal, sworn notice of claim generally has to be served on the correct agency within ninety days, the agency can question you under oath before a lawsuit is even filed, and street and sidewalk cases can require proof that the City had written notice of the defect beforehand. Those rules are explained on our municipal liability page.
If you are already past ninety days, do not assume the case is over. New York allows a court to permit a late notice in some circumstances, and that request has its own window.
Get medical care, preserve what you can, and do not give the other side's insurer a recorded statement before you talk to a lawyer.
In a New York motor vehicle case, no-fault benefits come first and they come regardless of who caused the crash. Basic coverage pays up to fifty thousand dollars toward medical treatment and related expenses, along with eighty percent of lost wages up to two thousand dollars a month for as long as three years. The application generally has to be filed within thirty days of the accident, and missing that window can cost you the benefits entirely.
What no-fault does not pay is just as important. It pays nothing for pain and suffering, and it does not cover the full value of a serious injury. To bring a case for pain and suffering after a car accident, New York also requires that the injury meet the legal definition of a serious injury, which includes categories such as a fracture, significant disfigurement, permanent or significant limitation of use, and a disability that keeps you from your usual activities for most of the first six months. Whether an injury qualifies is one of the first things our personal injury lawyers assess.
There is usually still a path. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on your own policy, or on a policy in your household, can cover a crash caused by a driver with no insurance or with limits too low to cover your injuries.
If the driver fled and was never identified, a claim may be available through a state fund created for exactly that situation. It carries its own strict requirements, including reporting the accident to police within twenty four hours and filing within ninety days. Hit and run victims often assume nothing can be done, and that assumption costs them the claim.
Yes. That is the adjuster's job, and it starts the moment a claim is opened. The friendly call, the quick offer, the request for a recorded statement, and the pressure to settle fast are all tools to close a file for less than the injury is worth.
A common tactic is to push a settlement before you know how badly you are hurt. Serious injuries reveal their full cost over time, through the surgery that turns out to be necessary, the symptoms that do not resolve, and the work you cannot go back to. An early check can look like relief and turn out to be a fraction of the value.
The answer is to build the case as if it will be tried, with the medical proof and the liability evidence fully developed. An insurer treats a file that is ready for a jury very differently from one it expects you to settle out of fear.
There is no flat answer, and anyone who quotes a number before knowing your case is not being straight with you. What a case is worth depends on the categories of loss the law allows and the strength of the proof behind each one:
Beyond the categories, value turns on the severity and permanence of the injury, the consistency of the medical record, the strength of the liability proof, the insurance available, any lien that has to be resolved out of a recovery, the venue and the jury pool, and how ready each side is to try the case.
You can still recover. New York reduces a recovery by your share of the fault rather than barring the claim, so being partly responsible lowers the number instead of ending the case. In certain construction cases involving height, your own conduct may not reduce it at all.
Expect the insurer to raise fault early anyway, because it is the cheapest way to lower a claim. That is another reason not to give a recorded statement before someone has looked at the facts with you.
This is the part almost nobody is told about until the end, and it decides how much of a settlement actually reaches you. Health insurers, Medicare and Medicaid, workers' compensation carriers, no-fault carriers, and sometimes hospitals can claim repayment out of a recovery for what they spent on your treatment.
Those claims are often negotiable, and reducing them is real money in your pocket rather than a formality. A case handled without attention to them can produce a good settlement and a disappointing check. Our personal injury lawyers deal with the liens as part of the case rather than as an afterthought.
The pressure shifts off you. The insurer's calls come to the firm, the evidence gets preserved, and the case starts moving while you focus on getting better.
From there a serious New York claim moves through recognizable stages: investigation and preservation of evidence, the notice of claim and pre-suit hearing where a public agency is involved, filing the lawsuit, the exchange of records and the depositions, the medical examination the defense requires and that you are prepared for, motion practice where it fits, mediation, and trial if the right number does not come. Treating physicians, engineers, economists, and life care planners turn an injury into proof a jury can weigh.
Serious cases take time, and the reason is usually medical. The value of a claim is not clear until your doctors can say what you will be living with permanently, and settling before that point is how injured people get shortchanged. You stay informed the whole way, and the decisions that are yours to make stay yours.
No. Our personal injury lawyers handle these cases on a contingency fee basis, which means there is no fee unless there is a recovery. The first consultation is free and carries no obligation.
After a serious injury, two things matter: getting better, and being made whole for what the injury cost you. Everything else is weight Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower carries so you do not have to. Our personal injury lawyers:
Our personal injury lawyers prepare every case as if it will be tried, because that is what makes an insurance company take your losses seriously. A settlement on the right number is welcome. A settlement that shortchanges what the injury cost you is not one this firm accepts just because it comes early.
The other side has already opened a file. You do not have to face them on their terms. Contact Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower and let our personal injury lawyers build your case before the evidence is gone. The consultation is free, and the firm does not get paid unless you do.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
For more answers to questions please visit our personal injury FAQ page.
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