If you were hurt in a crash anywhere in New York City, a New York car accident lawyer at Silver Law Group takes your case with no fee unless we recover money for you. We represent injured drivers, passengers, and the families of people killed in collisions across all five boroughs — the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island.
Every case starts with a free consultation, available 24/7 in English, Spanish, and Russian. Call 212-470-4544, and if you cannot come to us, an attorney can come to your home or hospital room.
Do You Have a Car Accident Case in New York
Not every crash becomes a lawsuit in New York. The state runs on a no-fault system, so your own insurance pays your first medical bills no matter who caused the collision. You can only step outside no-fault and sue the at-fault driver for pain and suffering if your injury clears the serious-injury threshold in Insurance Law §5102(d).
Insurance Law §5102(d) counts an injury as serious when it involves:
- death
- a bone fracture
- significant disfigurement, such as scarring
- permanent loss of use of a body organ, member, function, or system
- permanent or significant limitation of use of a body part
- a non-permanent injury that keeps you from your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the 180 days after the crash
If any of these fits what happened to you, you likely have a claim worth talking to a lawyer about. The line between a minor injury and a serious one is exactly where insurers fight hardest, and it is worth a free call to find out which side of it your case sits on.
How New York’s No-Fault System Works After a Crash
No-fault coverage is called Personal Injury Protection, or PIP, and it pays your medical bills and part of your lost wages regardless of who caused the crash. The catch is the clock. You have 30 days from the date of the accident to file the no-fault application with the insurer, and missing that window can cost you benefits you were entitled to. PIP has a hard limit, though: it does not pay a dime for pain and suffering. That is the whole reason the serious-injury threshold matters — clearing it is what lets you pursue the at-fault driver for the human cost of the crash, not just the receipts.
Types of Car Accident Cases We Handle
We handle the full range of car accident claims that happen on New York streets and highways, from routine rear-enders to crashes that leave lasting injuries. Common cases include:
- rear-end and T-bone side-impact collisions
- head-on crashes and multi-vehicle pileups
- hit-and-run crashes, where we pursue your own uninsured motorist coverage
- rideshare crashes involving Uber and Lyft drivers or passengers
- uninsured and underinsured motorist claims
- drunk and drugged driving crashes
- collisions that injure pedestrians and cyclists
What Your New York Car Accident Case Is Worth
What a case is worth comes down to how badly you were hurt and how far the injury reaches into your life — your medical costs, the income you lost, the earning power you may never fully get back, and the daily limits you now live with. New York sorts these losses into two groups.
Economic damages are the ones with receipts: medical bills, future treatment, lost wages, lost future earning capacity, and property damage to your vehicle.
Non-economic damages cover the harm that no invoice captures, meaning pain and suffering, and the loss of enjoyment of life when an injury takes away things you used to do.
No lawyer can promise a number before reviewing the medical records and the facts, and any firm that quotes you a figure on the first call is guessing. What we can do is value the claim honestly against what your injury will actually cost you.
What to Do After a Car Accident in New York
The hours after a crash decide how strong your claim will be. Take these steps in order:
- Get medical care, even if you feel fine. Some injuries surface days later, and a treatment record ties your injury to the crash.
- Call the police so the responding officer files an MV-104AN crash report, the official document your claim will lean on.
- Photograph the scene, the vehicles, the damage, and the road conditions before anything is moved.
- Exchange license, insurance, and contact details with the other driver.
- Do not admit fault or apologize at the scene. Fault is a legal question, not a courtesy.
- Decline any recorded statement to an insurance adjuster until you have spoken with a lawyer.
Acting quickly matters because evidence disappears fast, and the same speed protects both your 30-day no-fault filing and your injury claim.
What It Costs to Hire a New York Car Accident Lawyer
Nothing upfront. You pay no money to hire a New York car accident lawyer at our firm, because we work on contingency. Here is how that works. We advance the costs of building your case, including filing fees, medical record requests, and expert reviews, so you are not writing checks while you recover. Our fee is a percentage of the money we win for you, and it comes out of that recovery at the end. If we do not recover anything, you owe us no fee and you are not billed for the costs we fronted. The first consultation is free, so learning where your case stands costs you nothing either.
How Long You Have to File a Car Accident Claim in New York
New York gives you three years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit, under CPLR §214. If a loved one died in the collision, the wrongful death deadline is shorter, at two years from the date of death, under EPTL §5-4.1.
Different rules apply the moment a government vehicle is involved. If a city truck, an MTA bus, or another public agency caused your crash, you must file a Notice of Claim within 90 days under General Municipal Law §50-e, and the lawsuit itself must follow within one year and 90 days under GML §50-i. These government deadlines are far shorter than the three-year window, and courts enforce them strictly. Miss the deadline that applies to your case and, in most situations, the claim is gone for good, which is the single best reason not to wait to make a call.
What Happens If You Were Partly at Fault
You can still recover money even if the crash was partly your fault. New York follows pure comparative negligence under CPLR §1411, which means your compensation is reduced by your share of the blame but never erased by it. If you are found 30 percent at fault, you collect 70 percent of your damages, and even a driver mostly at fault can recover something. This is also why the insurance company will work hard to pin a bigger share of fault on you than you deserve, since every percentage point they add to your column is money subtracted from your recovery. Do not accept their version of who caused the crash without a lawyer checking it first.
Car Accidents Across New York City
Crashes remain a daily fact of life across New York City. NYC Department of Transportation data recorded 47,557 traffic injuries and 205 deaths citywide in 2025, the fewest fatalities since the city began keeping records in 1910, but still tens of thousands of people hurt in a single year. Behind most of those injury numbers is a police report. The MV-104AN crash report, filed by the responding NYPD officer, becomes the backbone of the insurance claim and any lawsuit that follows. We work with these reports across every borough, so we know how the paperwork and the agencies behind it actually move.
The Five Boroughs We Serve
We represent injured people in every one of New York City’s five boroughs. The law that governs your claim is identical in all of them, but where you file, which courts hear the case, which hospital treated you, and the crash patterns of each borough are not, so each borough has its own page with the local detail:
- Manhattan car accident lawyer
- Brooklyn car accident lawyer
- Queens car accident lawyer
- Bronx car accident lawyer
- Staten Island car accident lawyer
Start on your borough’s page if you already know where the crash happened, and start here if you are not sure yet.
Why Injured New Yorkers Choose Silver Law Group
Here is what you get when you call our office, stated plainly:
- A free consultation, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Service in English, Spanish, and Russian, so nothing about your case gets lost in translation.
- Contingency representation, with no fee unless we recover for you.
- A firm that prepares every case for trial, which tells the insurer we are ready to litigate rather than settle cheap.
- An attorney who can come to your home or hospital bed if you cannot travel.
- A Midtown Manhattan office at 49 West 37th Street, 7th Floor, reachable at 212-470-4544.
Call when you are ready. The consultation costs nothing and puts a lawyer on your side of the crash.