How Long Do You Have to File a Personal Injury Lawsuit in New York? The 3 Year Rule, the 90 Day Trap, and Every Deadline Long Island Accident Victims Need to Know (2026)

How long do you have to file a personal injury lawsuit in New York?

You have 3 years from the date you were injured to file a personal injury lawsuit in New York. CPLR 214(5) sets that period for any action to recover damages for a personal injury, which covers car accidents, slip and fall cases, dog bites, construction accidents, and most negligence claims. CPLR 214(4) sets the same 3 years for damage to your property, such as your car. Both periods run from the date of the accident, not from the date you realized how badly you were hurt.

Three years sounds like a long time, and that is exactly the problem with it. In my practice on Long Island, the people who lose personal injury cases to the statute of limitations are almost never people who waited 3 years. They are people who had 90 days and did not know it, or who thought the insurance claim they opened was the same thing as a lawsuit, or who were told by an adjuster that the file was "under review" for 2 years and then got a letter saying the company would not pay a dollar. By then the 3 years had quietly become 1.

The hard truth is that the statute of limitations is a wall, not a guideline. A judge in Nassau or Suffolk County Supreme Court cannot extend it because your injuries were serious, because the other driver admitted fault, or because the insurer strung you along. The defendant raises it in the first paper they file and the case is dismissed. Everything below is about the different places that wall actually stands, because for a large share of Long Island accidents it is not 3 years away.

What is the deadline if the accident involved a town, county, school district, or New York City?

If the party you need to sue is a city, county, town, village, fire district, or school district, you must serve a sworn notice of claim within 90 days after the claim arises under General Municipal Law 50-e(1)(a), and under 50-i(1) the lawsuit itself must be commenced within 1 year and 90 days after the event. Both requirements apply. Missing the 90 day notice is fatal unless a court grants leave to serve it late, and that leave cannot be granted after the 1 year and 90 day period has expired.

This rule catches more Long Island accident victims than any other, because public defendants are everywhere and rarely obvious. A pothole on a county road, a broken sidewalk in front of a village park, a county bus, a Suffolk County Police vehicle, a fall in a public school gym, a collision with a town sanitation truck: each of those is a municipal defendant with a 90 day fuse. The notice of claim has to be in writing, sworn to, and set out the time, place, and manner of the accident and the injuries, and it has to be served on the public corporation the way 50-e(3) requires, by personal delivery or certified mail, or in New York City by the City's electronic system. A letter to the town attorney's secretary does not count.

The State of New York is a separate rule with the same fuse. Under Court of Claims Act 10(3), a claim for personal injury caused by the negligence of a state officer or employee, which includes an accident on a state highway maintained by the Department of Transportation, must be filed and served on the Attorney General within 90 days of accrual. Serving a notice of intention within those 90 days extends the deadline for the claim itself to 2 years. The case is heard in the Court of Claims, not Supreme Court. If you were hurt on the Long Island Expressway, the Northern State Parkway, or a Sunrise Highway overpass, the question of who owns the road decides your deadline, and that question has to be answered in the first month, not the third year.

Two more points families get wrong. First, in a wrongful death claim against a municipality, 50-e(1)(a) runs the 90 days from the appointment of the estate's representative, not from the death, and 50-i gives 2 years from the death to sue. Second, a late notice of claim can sometimes be allowed under 50-e(5), and the court will weigh whether the municipality had actual knowledge of the facts within the 90 days or shortly after, whether the claimant was a minor or incapacitated, and whether the delay prejudiced the defense. It is a discretionary application, not a right, and it is far more expensive than serving the notice on time.

What are the New York personal injury deadlines, start to finish?

Here is every clock that can run after a New York accident, in the order it expires. Each one runs from the date of the accident unless the entry says otherwise.

1. Day 30: no-fault application for a motor vehicle accident. The regulation at 11 NYCRR 65-1.1 requires written notice of the accident to the no-fault insurer within 30 days, which is what the NF-2 application for benefits does. Miss it and the insurer can deny your medical bills and lost wages, even though your lawsuit deadline is years away.

2. Day 90: notice of claim against any city, county, town, village, fire district, or school district under General Municipal Law 50-e, and a claim or notice of intention against New York State under Court of Claims Act 10(3). In a wrongful death case against a municipality, the 90 days runs from the appointment of the estate's representative.

3. 1 year: assault, battery, false imprisonment, and the other intentional torts listed in CPLR 215(3). If the person who hurt you did it on purpose, you have one year, not three, unless a criminal case was brought, in which case CPLR 215(8) gives you at least one year from the end of the criminal case.

4. 1 year and 90 days: the lawsuit against a municipal defendant under General Municipal Law 50-i(1). The complaint must also allege that at least 30 days passed after the notice of claim was served and the claim was not adjusted or paid.

5. 2 years: wrongful death under EPTL 5-4.1(1), measured from the date of death, brought by the personal representative appointed by the Surrogate's Court. Also 2 years for a personal injury claim against New York State where a notice of intention was served within the first 90 days under Court of Claims Act 10(3), and 2 years from the death for wrongful death against a municipality under 50-i(1).

6. 2 years and 6 months: medical, dental, or podiatric malpractice under CPLR 214-a, measured from the act or omission, or from the last treatment where there was continuous treatment for the same condition.

7. 3 years: every other personal injury claim under CPLR 214(5), and property damage under CPLR 214(4). This covers car accidents against private drivers, slip and fall cases on private property, dog bites, construction site injuries, and defective product injuries from the date of injury.

8. Commencement: in New York a lawsuit is commenced by filing the summons and complaint with the county clerk. Calling a lawyer, opening a claim with an insurer, or sending a demand letter does not commence anything. The paper has to be filed before the applicable date above.

What does it cost to file, and what does missing the deadline cost you?

Filing a New York personal injury lawsuit costs very little up front, because almost every personal injury attorney on Long Island, my office included, works on a contingency fee and advances the court costs, so you pay nothing unless the case recovers money. The court's own charges, the index number fee and the request for judicial intervention, run a few hundred dollars and are confirmed with the county clerk at filing. I explain how the contingency fee works, and what percentage the lawyer takes, in how much a personal injury lawyer costs in New York.

Missing the deadline costs you the entire case. There is no partial credit. Run the numbers on a typical Long Island rear end collision: a herniated disc, $45,000 in medical bills, four months out of work at $1,500 a week for another $24,000 in lost wages, and a pain and suffering claim that, depending on the proof, might be worth several times that. If the summons is filed on the day after the three year anniversary, the insurer's lawyer moves to dismiss, the motion is granted, and the value of that claim is zero. Not reduced. Zero. I have watched people lose six figure cases over a calendar.

Do the math the way I make clients do it. The cost of hiring counsel in the first 30 days is nothing out of pocket. The cost of waiting is every dollar the case was worth. Even in a case where you ultimately settle without a lawsuit, which is how most personal injury cases resolve, the lawsuit is the leverage. An adjuster who knows the complaint is filed and the deadline is protected negotiates very differently from one who is watching your clock run with you. If you want to know how long the settlement side of the process actually takes once it is protected, I walk through it in how long a car accident settlement takes in New York.

Does the clock stop if you are still treating, still negotiating, or were a minor?

No, no, and partly. Ongoing medical treatment does not pause the personal injury statute of limitations; the 3 years under CPLR 214(5) runs from the injury regardless of whether you have finished physical therapy or are still waiting on a surgical recommendation. Negotiating with an insurance company does not pause it either, no matter how cooperative the adjuster seems. Being a minor does pause it, under CPLR 208, which extends the time to 3 years after the child turns 18 for most personal injury claims.

The treatment misconception comes from medical malpractice, where it is partly true. Under CPLR 214-a, the 2 year and 6 month period runs from the last date of continuous treatment for the same illness, injury, or condition, so a patient still under the care of the doctor who made the error may have more time. That rule does not travel to a car accident or a fall. Your orthopedist's treatment plan has no effect on your deadline to sue the other driver.

The infancy toll under CPLR 208 is real but has limits people miss. For an ordinary personal injury claim, a child injured at 10 has until 3 years after turning 18, so until 21, to file. For medical malpractice, the extension cannot run more than 10 years from the date the claim accrued, so a birth injury claim can expire while the child is still in elementary school. And the toll in CPLR 208 does not automatically excuse a late notice of claim against a municipality; infancy is one of the factors a court weighs under General Municipal Law 50-e(5), but the parent still has to make the application, and the court still has to grant it. A parent who assumes a child's claim against a school district will keep for years is making an expensive assumption.

Can the insurance company run out the clock on you?

Yes, and it is not illegal for them to do it. An insurer has no duty to warn you that your statute of limitations is about to expire, and nothing in the claims process, not the claim number, not the recorded statement, not the adjuster's assurance that the file is "being evaluated," pauses CPLR 214(5). From the insurer's side, every month you spend negotiating without a filed complaint is a month closer to a defense that costs them nothing.

I do not say this to make adjusters into villains. Most of them are doing a job, and some will tell you plainly to get a lawyer. But their job is to close your claim for the least money the company can pay, and the single best outcome for the company is a claim that expires. The pattern I see on Long Island is consistent: a reasonable opening conversation, a request for medical records, a long silence, a request for more records, a low offer around month 20, and a claimant who finally calls an attorney at month 30 with a file that now has to be rebuilt in 6 months. That is a case that can still be saved. The same call at month 37 cannot.

There is a second way the defense side can hurt you, and it changed in 2026. New York has always reduced a plaintiff's damages by their own share of fault under CPLR 1411(a), without barring recovery. For motor vehicle cases subject to the no-fault law, a new CPLR 1411(b), effective for actions commenced on or after May 26, 2026, bars recovery entirely if your culpable conduct is greater than the defendant's. A driver found 51 percent at fault now recovers nothing in a car accident lawsuit. That makes the fault investigation in the first weeks, the witnesses, the dash camera footage, the police report corrections, worth far more than it used to be, and it is one more reason the clock matters from day one. Slip and fall, construction, and dog bite cases stay under the old rule in 1411(a).

What can shorten or extend a New York personal injury deadline?

Shorter deadlines come from who the defendant is and what they did: 90 days for the notice of claim against a municipality under General Municipal Law 50-e, 90 days against the State under Court of Claims Act 10(3), 1 year for intentional torts under CPLR 215(3), and the 30 day no-fault notice under 11 NYCRR 65-1.1 for your own benefits. Longer deadlines come from the nature of the injury or the plaintiff: infancy under CPLR 208, the continuous treatment rule under CPLR 214-a, and the discovery rules for injuries that take years to appear.

The discovery rules are narrow and specific. Under CPLR 214-c(2), a personal injury caused by the latent effects of exposure to a substance, the asbestos and chemical exposure cases, runs 3 years from the date you discovered the injury or reasonably should have, rather than from the exposure. Under CPLR 214-a, a foreign object left in the body gives one year from discovery, and a negligent failure to diagnose cancer gives 2 years and 6 months from when the patient knew or should have known, capped at 7 years from the negligence itself. Outside those statutes there is no general discovery rule in New York. A back injury that turns out to be far worse than the emergency room thought does not restart the 3 years.

Criminal conduct can also extend things. Under CPLR 215(8) and EPTL 5-4.1(2), where a criminal action has been commenced against the same defendant for the same event, the injured person or the estate has at least one year from the end of the criminal case to sue, even if the civil deadline has already run. That matters in drunk driving and assault cases where the criminal prosecution drags on. It does not help you with an ordinary negligence claim where no one was charged. And New York City deserves its own sentence: the notice of claim rules under 50-e apply to the City and its agencies the same way they apply to a Long Island town, with the added option of electronic service through the City's system, and the 1 year and 90 day limit under 50-i is identical.

What mistakes cost Long Island accident victims their case?

After 27 years, the mistakes are the same ones. Assuming the deadline is 3 years without asking who owns the road, the sidewalk, or the bus. Serving a notice of claim on the wrong entity, the town instead of the county or the village instead of the school district, and learning the error at day 120. Treating the insurance claim as the lawsuit. Giving the no-fault insurer a phone call instead of the written NF-2 and losing the medical coverage that was supposed to pay the surgeon. Waiting for the doctor to say the injury is permanent before calling anyone. Letting a child's claim sit because "there is time." Each of those is a case I have seen end before it started.

If you take one thing from this article, take this: in a New York personal injury case, the first 90 days decide whether you have a case at all, and the first 30 days decide whether your medical bills get paid. The 3 year rule is real, but it is the longest deadline you will face, not the only one. Have an attorney identify every defendant and every clock within the first month, serve what has to be served, and then negotiate from a position where the calendar is working for you instead of against you. For the threshold your injury has to clear in a car accident case, see the serious injury threshold and no-fault in New York, and for how my office handles these cases, my personal injury practice.