A Brooklyn car accident lawyer from Silver Law Group will come to you, at your home or at your hospital bedside, often the same day you call. The first meeting is a free consultation, and you can use it to learn what the other driver’s insurance company owes you before you agree to anything. We take calls 24/7. If your car was hit on the Belt Parkway at 2 a.m., an attorney can be on your case before the adjuster makes the first call. You pay no fee unless you recover. Call 212-470-4544 after any Brooklyn car crash, and do not give the other driver’s insurer a statement until you have talked to us.
Do You Have a Brooklyn Car Accident Case?
You have a case when four things are true. The other driver owed you reasonable care, failed to use it, and that failure caused the crash and your injury. The law calls this negligence. Every driver on a Brooklyn street owes that duty, so most car accident lawsuits are fought over the other two questions: what the driver did wrong, and whether it caused your injury.
These crash patterns produce most of the car claims we see:
- Rear-end collisions in stop-and-go traffic, where the following driver had to leave enough room to stop
- T-bone crashes, where one car drives into the side of another after running a red light or failing to yield on a turn
- Head-on collisions, the most violent of the group, usually caused by a car drifting over the center line or driving the wrong way down a one-way street
- Intersection crashes involving left turns across oncoming traffic, where the turning driver’s right of way is often the whole dispute
More than one party can be responsible, and each one you name can add another insurance policy to your recovery.
- The driver who caused the crash.
- The car’s owner, if someone else owns it. Under VTL 388, an owner is liable for anyone who drives the car with permission. That matters when the at-fault driver borrowed the car or carries little insurance.
- The driver’s employer, if the driver was working at the time, for example making a delivery in a personal car.
- The City of New York, if a defective roadway helped cause the crash, such as a broken signal, missing signage, or a dangerous road design. Claims against the City have their own short deadline, covered below.
Meeting New York’s Serious Injury Threshold
No-fault insurance pays your first medical bills and part of your lost wages, no matter who caused the crash. To sue the at-fault driver for pain and suffering, your injury has to meet the serious injury threshold in Insurance Law 5102(d). These categories come up most often in car cases:
- A fracture of any bone
- Significant disfigurement, such as visible facial scarring
- Permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member
- A medically documented injury that kept you from nearly all of your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the first 180 days after the crash
Insurers fight over this threshold more than anything else. Once discovery ends, defense lawyers often ask the court for summary judgment, arguing that your injury is not serious enough to go to a jury. What beats that motion is objective proof: an MRI showing the herniated disc or torn ligament, range-of-motion tests measured in degrees and compared with normal values, and a treating doctor who connects both to the crash. If all you have is a description of pain, the case often ends at that motion.
If You Were Partly at Fault
CPLR 1411 makes New York a pure comparative negligence state. Your damages are reduced by your share of the fault, and that is the only penalty. If a jury finds you 20% responsible for a collision at a Flatbush Avenue intersection, your award goes down by 20%. If the jury finds you 60% at fault, you still recover 40% of your damages. Adjusters sometimes tell injured drivers that admitting to a late lane change ends the claim. Under CPLR 1411, it does not.
Where Brooklyn Car Crashes Happen
NYC DOT counted 63 traffic deaths in Brooklyn in 2025, down from 69 in 2024. Even with that drop, more than one person died on Brooklyn roads almost every week. Most of the serious crashes we see happen on a short list of corridors:
- Eastern Parkway. Transportation Alternatives counted 21.5 deaths and serious injuries per mile there from 2022 through 2025, which put it among the worst corridors in the city. Service-road merges and long pedestrian crossings add conflict points at every block.
- Atlantic Avenue, a multi-lane commercial road with heavy turning traffic and double-parked delivery vehicles that push cars into the next lane.
- Flatbush Avenue, one of the borough’s longest commercial roads, where buses, turning cars, and crowded intersections leave little room for driver error.
- The BQE, which has short on-ramps, sudden backups, and places with almost no shoulder for a disabled car.
- The Belt Parkway, where cars at highway speed along the southern shoreline run into slowdowns they cannot see coming.
Where the crash happened affects how we build the claim. On a fast road like the Belt or the BQE, fault usually comes down to speed and following distance, which dashcam and traffic-camera video can prove. On a City-maintained street, the road itself may be a defendant. Camera footage gets erased, so we ask for it in the first days of the case.
What a Brooklyn Car Accident Claim Is Worth
Your claim has two layers, and insurers count on you not knowing that the second one exists. The first layer is no-fault, which your own car insurance pays no matter who caused the crash. Insurance Law 5102(a) defines this basic economic loss and caps it at $50,000 per person. Within that cap, no-fault pays:
- Necessary medical and rehabilitation bills
- Lost earnings, after a 20% deduction, up to $2,000 a month for no more than three years from the accident
No-fault pays nothing for pain, lost sleep, a missed wedding, or a body that no longer works the way it did. That is what the second layer covers. Once your injury meets the serious injury threshold, a car accident lawsuit against the at-fault driver can recover:
- Pain and suffering, past and future
- Future medical care, such as surgery, injections, physical therapy, and home help
- Lost earning capacity, if you cannot go back to the same job or the same hours
- Medical bills and wage losses beyond what no-fault paid
No honest car accident attorney can put a number on your claim at the first meeting. The value depends on facts that develop over months, including what the MRI shows, whether you need surgery, whether your doctor finds the limitation permanent, your age and work, and how much insurance the at-fault driver and car owner carry. We give you our estimate once the medical record supports one.
What to Do After a Car Crash in Brooklyn
Each of these steps creates evidence, and the order matters. Missing one gives the insurer a reason to doubt you.
- Call 911 and have the NYPD make a report at the scene. Write down the report number and the precinct.
- Get medical care the same day. Kings County Hospital, Maimonides Medical Center, and NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn are Level I trauma centers. A delay in treatment is the first thing an adjuster points to when arguing that the crash did not cause your injury.
- Take photos of both cars where they stopped, the damage, the license plates, the traffic signals, skid marks, and your visible injuries. Photograph the other driver’s license and insurance card.
- File DMV form MV-104 within 10 days if anyone was hurt or property damage was over $1,000, as VTL 605 requires. The police report does not take its place.
- Send your written no-fault notice to the car insurer within 30 days.
- Turn down any recorded statement for the other driver’s insurer. The adjuster is listening for a single sentence, like “I feel okay,” that can be used to cut your claim.
- Call a car crash lawyer before you sign a medical authorization or a release.
How Your Case Moves Through Kings County Supreme Court
Most Brooklyn car cases settle before trial. Each stage below is a point where the insurer reconsiders its offer, so we prepare every stage as if the case will reach a jury.
- The no-fault claim opens first, and your medical bills get paid while you are still in treatment.
- Once your treatment levels off, we send the at-fault driver’s insurer a liability demand with your records, imaging, and wage proof. Some cases settle at this stage.
- If the offer is too low, we file the lawsuit in Kings County Supreme Court at 360 Adams Street in Downtown Brooklyn.
- In discovery, each side exchanges medical records, police reports, photos, video, and insurance information.
- At depositions, you and the other driver answer questions under oath. We prepare you beforehand, and that preparation shapes how the defense sees your case.
- The defense medical exam is done by a doctor the insurer chooses. Expect that doctor’s report to downplay your injury, and expect us to answer it with your treating doctors’ findings.
- In mediation, a neutral mediator meets with both sides, and many cases settle there once depositions are finished.
- At trial, a Brooklyn jury decides fault and damages.
What Hiring a Brooklyn Car Accident Lawyer Costs
You pay nothing upfront. Silver Law Group handles car accident cases on a contingency fee, which means there is no retainer and no hourly bill. Our fee is a percentage of the settlement or verdict, agreed in writing before we start, and it is paid only from that recovery. If we do not recover for you, you owe no fee.
We also advance the costs of building your case, including filing fees at Kings County Supreme Court, police and hospital records, expert reports, and deposition transcripts. Those costs are paid back out of the recovery, as the written agreement explains. Because we are paid only when you are, a weak first offer does nothing for us, and we have every reason to push for more.
Deadlines for Brooklyn Car Accident Claims
New York car accident claims have four separate deadlines. Which ones apply depends on who hit you and what kind of claim you are making.
- 30 days to give your car insurer written notice of your no-fault claim under 11 NYCRR 65-1.1. A late notice gives the insurer grounds to deny your medical bills and lost wages.
- 3 years from the crash to sue the at-fault driver and car owner under CPLR 214.
- 90 days to file a Notice of Claim under GML 50-e if the City is responsible, for example when you were hit by a City-owned car or a defective City roadway caused the crash.
- 1 year and 90 days to file a lawsuit against the City under GML 50-i.
The City deadline is the one people miss. A crash with an NYPD car looks like any other insurance claim until day 91, when the right to sue the City may already be gone.
Fatal Car Accidents and Wrongful Death Claims
EPTL 5-4.1 gives a family two years from the date of death to bring a wrongful death claim after a fatal car crash. Only the personal representative of the estate can file. That is the executor named in the will, or an administrator appointed by the Surrogate’s Court if there is no will. If no one has been appointed, the appointment has to happen first, and it takes time out of the two years.
The Grieving Families Act would have changed these rules, but it was vetoed in December 2025. The existing law still applies, including the two-year deadline, and families still cannot recover for their own grief. Our fatal accident lawyers can help the family start the estate appointment while we keep the evidence from the crash, including the police investigation, vehicle data, and witness names.
Why Brooklyn Crash Victims Choose Silver Law Group
We speak Russian, Spanish, and English. A family in Brighton Beach, Sunset Park, or Bushwick can go over the police report, the no-fault forms, and the insurer’s offer in their own language, with no interpreter in between. Older parents can understand the documents they are asked to sign, and nobody has to explain an injury through a relative.
We prepare every case for trial from the first day. Insurers set settlement offers partly based on whether the lawyers on the other side will actually try the case in Kings County. Our files are built with depositions prepared and medical proof organized, so the offer has to reflect the real risk of a Brooklyn jury.
What you get when you hire us:
- A free consultation at your home, your hospital room, or our office
- No fee unless you recover
- An attorney you can reach 24/7
Our office is at 49 West 37th Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10018, in Midtown Manhattan, and our car accident attorneys regularly come to clients in Brooklyn. Call 212-470-4544 to talk with a lawyer today.