Three Years to Sue, 30 Days to Act: Filing an Injury Claim in New York

Ask how long you have to bring an injury claim in New York and the answer you’ll usually hear is “three years.” That’s true as far as it goes — and it’s one of the more generous windows in the country — but the deadlines that actually make or break New York claims are much shorter. Some are measured in months. One is measured in days.

The 30-day clock almost nobody warns you about

New York is a no-fault auto insurance state. After a car crash, your own insurer — not the other driver’s — generally pays your medical bills and a portion of your lost earnings through personal injury protection (PIP), regardless of who caused the collision. Basic no-fault coverage in New York runs up to $50,000 per person and generally includes medical and rehabilitation expenses, 80% of lost earnings up to $2,000 per month for up to three years, and a small daily allowance for other reasonable expenses.

Here is the part that catches people: under New York’s no-fault regulations, you generally must file a written notice of claim with the no-fault insurer as soon as reasonably practicable — and in no event more than 30 calendar days after the accident. Miss that window without a recognized excuse and the benefits that were supposed to be automatic can be denied. People who assume they have years to deal with the paperwork routinely lose this coverage in the first month, long before any lawyer ever hears about the case.

The “serious injury” threshold: when you can actually sue after a crash

No-fault benefits are the trade for a significant restriction. Under New York Insurance Law § 5104, you generally cannot sue another driver for pain and suffering — what the law calls non-economic loss — unless your injury qualifies as a “serious injury” under Insurance Law § 5102(d). The statutory categories include, among others:

• a fracture;
• significant disfigurement;
• permanent loss of use of a body organ, member, function, or system;
• permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member;
• significant limitation of use of a body function or system; and
• a medically determined non-permanent injury that prevents substantially all of your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the 180 days immediately following the accident.

Whether an injury clears this threshold is one of the most heavily litigated questions in New York crash cases. Insurers routinely argue that soft-tissue injuries, herniated discs, and concussions fall short, and the medical documentation you build in the first weeks often decides the fight. This is a genuinely different system from most states, and it’s a major reason early medical care and early legal review matter more here than the three-year headline number suggests.

Hurt by a city, school district, or the State? Think in days, not years

New York is dense with public defendants: city buses, public hospitals, police vehicles, school districts, municipal sidewalks and roads. If your claim is against a city, county, town, village, or many public authorities, General Municipal Law § 50-e generally requires a sworn notice of claim within 90 days of the incident — before any lawsuit. The lawsuit itself then generally must be filed within one year and 90 days under General Municipal Law § 50-i, not three years.

Claims against the State of New York itself follow their own path through a dedicated court, the Court of Claims — a quirk many states don’t have. Under Court of Claims Act § 10, a negligence claim against the State generally must be filed and served within 90 days, unless a notice of intention is served in that window, which can extend the time to file. Courts have some discretion to accept late notices in limited circumstances, but that relief is never assured, and banking on it is how valid claims die.

The practical takeaway: if there is any chance a government entity is involved — a pothole, a sidewalk defect, a transit accident, a public hospital — the real deadline is likely measured in weeks from the day you were hurt.

The three-year rule, and the shorter clocks hiding inside it

For most ordinary negligence claims against private parties — car crashes, falls on private property, and the like — New York generally allows three years from the date of injury to file suit, under CPLR 214. But several common claim types run shorter:

• Medical malpractice: generally two years and six months under CPLR 214-a, usually from the malpractice or the end of continuous treatment. A discovery rule known as Lavern’s Law can extend the start date in certain missed-cancer-diagnosis cases, subject to an outer limit.
• Wrongful death: generally two years from the date of death under EPTL 5-4.1.
• Government defendants: the 90-day notice rules and shortened filing periods described above.

Every deadline here has exceptions in both directions — rules for minors, for late discovery, for criminal proceedings arising from the same events — so treat these as the general shape, not a calculation you should run yourself. Our New York quick-reference page collects the key numbers in one place, and you can see how New York compares to other states in our state-by-state statute of limitations guide.

Fault works in your favor here: pure comparative negligence

New York follows pure comparative negligence under CPLR 1411. Your own carelessness does not bar recovery — it reduces it in proportion to your share of the blame. Even someone found mostly at fault can generally still recover the remaining percentage from the other side. That makes New York one of the friendlier states for injured people who made a mistake too, and it means an insurer’s claim that the accident was “your fault” is an argument about percentages, not a reason to walk away.

No damage caps — and a wrongful-death fight worth knowing about

Unlike many states, New York has not enacted statutory caps on compensatory damages in personal injury or medical malpractice cases — as of 2026, what a claim is worth is generally a question for the evidence and the jury, not a ceiling written into a statute. One notable exception cuts the other way: New York’s wrongful death statute has long limited families to pecuniary losses, without compensation for grief. The legislature has passed a reform known as the Grieving Families Act multiple times in recent years, and it has been vetoed each time, including in December 2023. As of this writing the old rule still stands, but this is an area of active legislative debate — another reason to confirm the current law with a licensed New York attorney rather than an old article.

What to do with all of this

The pattern in New York is consistent: the headline deadline is long, but the decisions that shape a claim — the 30-day no-fault filing, the 90-day notice of claim, the medical record that proves a serious injury — happen early. If you were hurt in New York and want to know where your situation fits, answer a few questions about what happened and we’ll connect you with a participating law firm that can evaluate it properly. It’s free, confidential, and there’s no obligation.