If you were hurt in a fall on a broken or icy sidewalk, a NYC sidewalk accident lawyer can help you find out who is responsible and recover for what the fall cost you. These are premises liability claims, and in New York City they turn on a question most people get wrong: the City is usually not the right defendant.
They also turn on measurements and photographs taken in the first days. A sidewalk gets repaired quickly once a claim is made, and the condition as it existed on the day you fell is the case. Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower moves on that immediately. Below are the questions injured people ask our sidewalk accident 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 may have a case if a defect in the sidewalk, or snow and ice that should have been cleared, caused your fall, and the party responsible for that stretch of sidewalk failed to maintain it.
Falling by itself is not a claim. What makes one is a condition that should have been repaired or cleared, a party with the legal responsibility to do it, and proof of what the sidewalk looked like before it was fixed. Our sidewalk accident lawyers review that at no cost.
This is the first question in every case, and the answer decides the defendant, the deadline, and what has to be proven.
New York City shifted responsibility for maintaining most sidewalks onto the owner of the property the sidewalk runs past. For apartment buildings, commercial properties, and larger residential buildings, the claim runs against that owner and its insurer rather than against the City.
There is an exception. For one, two, and three family homes that are owner occupied and used only as a residence, the City generally remains responsible for the sidewalk. That single distinction changes everything about a case, including a ninety day deadline, which is why the type of building matters so much.
Street trees belong to the City, and roots that lift and crack flags are behind a large share of sidewalk falls. These cases can involve the City, the abutting owner, or both, depending on where exactly you fell and what caused the flag to raise.
Where an owner installs something in the sidewalk for the building's own benefit, including cellar doors, hatchways, gratings, vault covers, and driveway curb cuts, that owner is responsible for it regardless of the building type. A fall on a rusted cellar door or a sunken grate is usually a claim against the building, not the City.
Sunken trench patches, steel plates left over a cut, and gaps around new work belong to the utility or the contractor that did the work, and often to the general contractor on a nearby project. Those cases can also involve construction issues where a site created the condition.
There is no magic number, and any lawyer who gives you one is guessing. New York does not have a fixed height that makes a defect actionable, and it does not treat every small imperfection as a case either.
What courts look at is the whole picture: the width, depth, and elevation of the defect, how irregular or jagged it is, whether it was in a walkway people are expected to use, the lighting, and whether the condition had a trap like quality that would catch a foot. A modest height difference at the edge of a shadowed step can matter more than a larger one in plain view.
That is why measuring matters. Photograph the defect with a coin, a ruler, or a phone in the frame for scale, from ground level and from standing height, before it is repaired. A well documented defect that seems small can support a case, and an undocumented one rarely does.
Yes, where the City is actually responsible, and two extra hurdles apply.
The first is a formal notice of claim, generally due within about ninety days of the fall, with a shortened time to sue after that and a sworn hearing before a lawsuit is filed. Those rules are on our municipal liability page.
The second is prior written notice. For most sidewalk and roadway defects, the City can be held responsible only if it received written notice of that specific condition beforehand, or created it through its own work. That is why the defect maps filed with the City by an outside committee matter so much in these cases, along with prior complaints, repair records, and permits. Locating that notice is early work in every City sidewalk case, and it is a large part of what separates a claim that survives from one that does not.
Property owners in New York City are required to clear snow and ice from the sidewalk within a set period after the snowfall ends, generally about four hours, with the clock effectively paused overnight so that snow ending late at night has to be cleared by the following morning. Missing that window is a strong starting point.
The defense you will hear is that the storm was still in progress. New York does allow an owner a reasonable time after precipitation stops before the duty to clear begins, which makes weather records establishing exactly when the snow ended some of the most important evidence in these cases.
Ice from a different source is a different case entirely. Water from a leaking downspout, a broken gutter, a hose, or refreezing meltwater is a condition the property created, and the storm in progress argument does not apply to it in the same way.
That is the argument you should expect, and it is not the end of a case. New York applies comparative fault, which reduces a recovery by your share of responsibility rather than eliminating it, so even a finding that you should have been watching more carefully does not defeat the claim.
The open and obvious argument fails for the same reason. A visible defect can still be unreasonably dangerous, and a property owner is not excused from maintaining a sidewalk because a hazard could have been seen. What answers these arguments is the specific evidence: the lighting, the crowd on the sidewalk, what you were carrying, and how long the condition had existed.
By establishing three things: who was responsible for that stretch, that the defect was dangerous, and that it existed long enough for someone to have fixed it.
Our sidewalk accident lawyers pull property ownership and building classification records, the City's defect maps and prior written notice records, 311 complaints, Department of Transportation permits and repair histories, violation records, work orders and contracts for repairs and snow removal, weather data in an ice case, and any video from businesses and buildings along the block. Historical street level imagery is often useful as well, because it can show how long a raised flag or a broken grate had been there.
The photographs you take in the first days remain the single most valuable piece of evidence in most of these cases.
Generally three years from the date of the fall against a private property owner, and two years in a death case. Where the City is responsible, including in front of many small owner occupied homes, a written notice of claim is generally due within about ninety days.
Because the identity of the responsible party is not obvious from the sidewalk itself, the safe approach is to treat the ninety day clock as running until someone confirms which category the property falls into.
Hip fractures in older adults deserve particular attention, because they often begin a permanent loss of independence that matters far more than the fracture itself, and a claim has to account for that rather than for the surgery alone.
No. Our sidewalk accident 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.
Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower carries the case so you can focus on getting better. Our sidewalk accident lawyers:
Our sidewalk accident lawyers prepare every case as if it will be tried, because that is what makes an owner and its insurer take the injury seriously. A settlement on the right number is welcome. A settlement that shortchanges what the fall cost you is not one this firm accepts just because it comes early.
The sidewalk that caused your fall may be repaired within weeks, and with it the proof of what it looked like. The consultation is free, and Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower 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.
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