A Nassau car accident lawyer from Silver Law Group can talk with you today about the crash and what it has already cost you. The consultation is free and the phone is answered 24/7. If you are recovering at home in Elmont or in a hospital bed in East Meadow, the attorney comes to you. You do not have to drive to Manhattan with a fractured wrist to start a claim.
Much of what decides a car accident case happens in the first month. That includes the no-fault application, the police report, your early medical records and the adjuster’s request for a recorded statement. Call 212-470-4544 and tell us what happened. You will get a plain answer about whether you have a claim and what needs to happen this week.
Car Accidents on Nassau County Roads
In 2024, crashes in Nassau and Suffolk counties killed 175 people in 164 fatal collisions. Most serious car crashes in Nassau happen on a short list of roads that every local driver knows:
- Hempstead Turnpike (Route 24) through Elmont and East Meadow. This wide commercial road has cars pulling out of plazas and driveways across several lanes of fast traffic, which leads to T-bone and sideswipe crashes.
- The Southern State and Northern State parkways. Narrow lanes, curves and short merge ramps leave little room to fix a mistake, so one late merge can set off a chain of impacts.
- The Long Island Expressway, where stop-and-go congestion at highway speed produces rear-end and multi-car crashes
The road also tells your lawyer where to find the evidence. A crash on Hempstead Turnpike may have been caught by storefront cameras, and many businesses record over that footage quickly. A parkway crash usually has witnesses who drove away and have to be found through the police report. A car accident attorney who knows these roads sends preservation letters before the video is gone.
Multi-car crashes on the LIE need their own planning. Three or four drivers may each have a different insurer, and each adjuster will try to put the blame on someone else. Your claim has to show which driver started the chain and how each impact added to your injuries.
Head-On, Rear-End and Intersection Crashes
The type of crash decides who has to prove what.
In a rear-end collision, New York courts presume the following driver was negligent. That driver must come forward with a non-negligent explanation. “The car ahead stopped short” often fails, because every driver is expected to leave enough room to stop.
Head-on crashes usually involve a crossover, where one car drifts over the center line, or a wrong-way driver coming down a parkway exit ramp. The car in the wrong lane is the starting point for fault. The defense will usually claim something forced the driver over, such as a skid or a swerve to avoid another car. A head-on car crash lawyer tests that story against skid marks, the crash data recorder and the damage pattern on both vehicles.
Left-turn crashes on Jericho Turnpike and Old Country Road turn on the duty of a left-turning driver to yield to oncoming traffic. The disputes are about the color of the light and how fast the oncoming car was going, and both affect how fault is split.
Silver Law Group has separate pages for crashes caused by drunk drivers and for hit-and-run collisions. Each of those claims follows its own rules.
Do You Have a Car Accident Case in Nassau County?
New York’s no-fault system pays your first $50,000 in medical bills and lost wages through your own insurer, no matter who caused the crash. In exchange, you can sue the other driver for pain and suffering only if your injury meets the serious injury definition in Insurance Law 5102(d). You can also sue if your economic loss is more than the $50,000 no-fault covers.
Most car accident claims rely on these serious injury categories:
- A fracture of any bone, including a cracked rib or a broken wrist
- A significant limitation of use of a body function or system
- A permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member
- A medically determined injury that kept you from doing substantially all of your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the first 180 days after the crash
A fracture is the easiest category to prove because the X-ray settles it.
The limitation categories are where Nassau cases are won or lost. The insurer will send you to a doctor it picks. That doctor will often call a herniated disc degenerative or record a full range of motion. Your answer has to be objective: MRI findings, measured range-of-motion testing compared against normal values, and a treating doctor who links the injury to this crash.
The economic-loss route matters if you earn a high income or need long treatment. When your medical bills and lost income go past $50,000, you can sue for the amount over that line even without a qualifying injury. Pain and suffering still requires a serious injury.
How Fault Is Shared Under New York Law
New York follows pure comparative negligence under CPLR 1411. If a jury finds you 20 percent responsible for the crash, your damages are cut by 20 percent. If it finds you 70 percent responsible, you still collect the other 30 percent from the other driver.
Some websites say New York blocks recovery once you are 50 percent or more at fault. That is the modified comparative negligence rule some other states use, and it is not the law here. If an adjuster tells you that shared fault means you get nothing, the adjuster is wrong.
Fault percentages still matter for your money. Insurers start arguing about fault early, often in the first phone call, because every percentage point they put on you comes straight off what they pay. A rolling stop at a Jericho Turnpike light or a few miles over the limit on the Northern State becomes their argument. Your car crash lawyer answers with the police report, vehicle data and witness statements instead of your memory alone.
What Your Nassau Car Accident Claim Is Worth
No-fault covers only part of your losses. Its lost-wage benefit is capped at $2,000 a month and ends after three years. It pays nothing for pain, for a career you can no longer do, or for help you now need at home.
A car accident lawsuit against the at-fault driver can cover the rest:
- Pain and suffering, past and future, including the activities you can no longer enjoy
- Future medical treatment, such as a surgery your orthopedist expects down the line, ongoing physical therapy, injections and medication
- Lost earning capacity if you cannot go back to the same work or the same hours
- Wages lost above the no-fault cap
- Household help: paying someone for the cleaning, childcare, yard work and driving you used to do yourself
Three things drive the value of your claim. The first is which serious injury category your medical proof supports. The second is how fault is split. The third is how much insurance the at-fault driver carries.
A fracture that needs surgery and permanent hardware is valued very differently from a soft-tissue injury that heals in six months. Future losses need proof from your doctors before a Nassau jury will award them, and sometimes from an economist or vocational expert too.
We will not quote you a number at the first meeting. A responsible value comes only after your doctors can describe what your future looks like.
What Happens After a Nassau County Car Accident
These steps protect your health first and your claim second, in the order they come up.
- Get examined the same day. Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow and North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset are both Level I trauma centers, and ambulance crews take the worst injuries there. If you went home from the scene, see a doctor within days, because the defense will point to any gap between the crash and your first treatment.
- Get the Nassau County Police Department crash report. You can order it online through LexisNexis or request it in person at 1490 Franklin Avenue, Mineola. Check the driver information, the diagram and the officer’s narrative for mistakes.
- File your no-fault application with your own auto insurer within 30 days. A late application gives the insurer grounds to deny your medical bills and lost wages.
- Photograph the cars, your injuries and the scene. Keep every bill, receipt and pay stub.
- Decline the other driver’s insurer when it asks for a recorded statement.
- Call a lawyer before you sign any release or medical authorization the insurer mails you.
Which Nassau Court Hears Your Case
Two courts handle most Nassau car accident cases. The size of the claim decides which one hears yours.
- Nassau County District Court, 99 Main Street, Hempstead, hears civil claims up to $15,000, such as smaller property damage disputes or minor injury claims.
- Nassau County Supreme Court, 100 Supreme Court Drive, Mineola, has no dollar limit and is where serious-injury suits are filed.
A claim built on Insurance Law 5102(d) belongs in Mineola. Your jury there is drawn from Nassau residents, people who drive the same parkways you do.
What a Nassau Car Accident Lawyer Costs
You pay nothing upfront to hire Silver Law Group. The firm works on a contingency fee, which means:
- No retainer, no hourly bill and nothing out of your pocket to start
- The fee is a percentage of what you recover and is paid only from a settlement or verdict
- If there is no recovery, you owe no fee
- The percentage is written into an agreement you read and sign before any work begins
This setup ties the firm’s interest to yours. A lawyer who is paid only from your recovery has a reason to build the case fully and no reason to drag out a weak one.
It also means you can hire an automobile accident attorney while you are out of work and living on no-fault checks. The first consultation is free and you are not obligated to sign anything. At that meeting, ask any firm you are considering to show you its fee percentage in writing.
Deadlines for Nassau Car Accident Lawsuits
Under CPLR 214, you have three years from the date of the crash to file a lawsuit against a private driver. That time gets used up quickly once you count months of treatment, the work needed to prove a serious injury, and insurers that slow down negotiations as the deadline gets closer.
The deadline gets much shorter when a government vehicle is involved. A county police car, a town highway truck or a village public works vehicle triggers General Municipal Law 50-e. Under that law, you must file a written Notice of Claim within 90 days of the crash. Under GML 50-i, the lawsuit itself must follow within one year and 90 days.
In Nassau, these rules apply to more defendants than most people expect:
- Nassau County
- The Towns of Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay
- The Cities of Glen Cove and Long Beach
- All 64 incorporated villages in the county
Ninety days goes by fast when you are in a hospital bed. If a public vehicle or a town-maintained signal was involved in your crash, call a lawyer this week rather than next month.
Fatal Car Accidents and Wrongful Death Claims
Under EPTL 5-4.1, a wrongful death claim after a fatal car crash must be filed within two years of the date of death. Family members cannot file it in their own names. The claim belongs to the personal representative of the estate.
That representative must first be appointed by the Nassau County Surrogate’s Court at 262 Old Country Road, Mineola. If the person who died left a will, the named executor applies for letters testamentary. If there is no will, a family member petitions for letters of administration. The appointment takes time, and it has to happen inside the two-year window.
Experienced fatal accident lawyers handle the Surrogate’s Court petition and the wrongful death action together so neither deadline slips. If a government vehicle was involved, the municipal notice rules also apply and run on their own schedule. Silver Law Group handles these claims on the same contingency terms and will meet the family at home.
Why Nassau Families Call Silver Law Group
When you call, this is what you get:
- A free consultation in English, Spanish or Russian, so you and your family can explain the crash in the language you are most comfortable with
- An answer 24/7, including the night of the crash
- An attorney who comes to your Nassau home or hospital room
- Trial-ready preparation from the first week, with every case built as if a Mineola jury will hear it, because adjusters judge their offers by how the case would look in front of a jury
Our office is in Midtown Manhattan at 49 West 37th Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10018. The firm does not have a Nassau branch. Instead, the attorney comes to you.
Call 212-470-4544 today for a free consultation with a car wreck lawyer.