If a drunk driver hurt you anywhere in New York City, the right to hold that driver accountable does not depend on which borough the crash happened in. A drunk driver accident attorney at Silver Law Group takes these cases on contingency, so there is no fee unless you recover. The call that starts your case is free, answered 24 hours a day, and handled in English, Spanish, or Russian. If your injuries keep you at home or in a hospital bed, the attorney can come to you.
Do You Have a Drunk Driving Injury Case in New York
In 2023, 50 traffic deaths across New York City were tied directly to driving while intoxicated, according to city data, and that figure leaves out the far larger number of people who survived a drunk driving crash with lasting injuries. Your injury is yours to pursue. The criminal DWI charge the driver faces belongs to the district attorney and runs on its own track; a prosecutor can win it, lose it, or drop it, and your civil claim for what the crash did to you keeps going either way.
The drunk driver’s own conduct usually makes fault easier to prove. Vehicle and Traffic Law 1192 makes it illegal to drive at a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent or higher, and 0.04 percent for a commercial driver. When a driver breaks that law and injures someone, the violation is strong evidence of negligence and can support negligence per se, which treats the illegal act itself as the careless conduct rather than something you have to build from scratch.
New York adds one gate that every car crash claim has to clear. The state’s no-fault system pays your early medical bills and part of your lost wages through your own insurer no matter who caused the crash, but it also limits when you can sue the drunk driver for pain and suffering. That door opens only if your injury meets the serious-injury threshold in Insurance Law 5102(d): a fracture, significant disfigurement, permanent limitation of the use of a body part, and similar defined harms all qualify. A drunk driver accident lawyer measures your medical records against that standard before anything gets filed, because an injury that clears it changes what your case can demand.
Who Can Be Held Responsible Besides the Drunk Driver
The drunk driver is not always the only party who owes you money. New York law reaches past the person behind the wheel to the people and businesses that helped put them there.
- Dram Shop liability under General Obligations Law 11-101. A bar, restaurant, or store that unlawfully sold alcohol to a visibly intoxicated person can be held liable when that person later causes a crash.
- Unlawfully furnishing alcohol to someone under 21 under General Obligations Law 11-100. Anyone who provides alcohol to a person under the legal age who then drives drunk may share responsibility for the harm that follows.
- The driver’s employer. If the driver was working at the time, making deliveries or driving for the job, the employer may be on the hook alongside them.
Finding these defendants means tracing where the driver drank before the crash, work that starts the moment the case does. Each one is another insurance policy and another source of recovery, which matters most when the driver alone cannot cover what the crash cost you.
Compensation You Can Recover in a New York Drunk Driving Case
What your case is worth depends on how badly you were hurt and what those injuries take from you. New York lets you recover two kinds of damages, and drunk driving can open a third.
Economic damages cover the money losses you can add up:
- Emergency care, surgery, and hospital bills
- Future medical care and rehabilitation
- Wages you lost while you could not work
- Lost earning capacity if the injury changes what you can do for a living
Non-economic damages cover the harm that has no receipt: pain and suffering, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life. Serious injuries also carry costs that arrive years later, and those future needs, from added surgeries to long-term therapy, belong in the claim from the start rather than after they show up.
There is a third category that ordinary crashes rarely reach. Because drunk driving is reckless rather than merely careless, a court may allow punitive damages meant to punish the driver, and General Obligations Law 11-101 specifically permits them in Dram Shop cases. No two cases carry the same value, and no honest lawyer will promise you a number before seeing your records and your losses.
What If the Drunk Driver Had No Insurance or Too Little
Drunk drivers are often the least insured people on the road. Many carry only New York’s minimum coverage, and some carry none at all, which leaves you facing real medical bills against a driver who cannot pay them. Your own auto policy can fill that gap. Supplementary Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist coverage, known as SUM, pays out of your policy when the at-fault driver’s insurance runs out or never existed. Silver Law Group pursues the full limits your policy owes, so the driver’s lack of coverage does not quietly become your loss.
What to Do After a Drunk Driving Crash in New York
The hours after a crash decide what evidence survives. These steps protect both your health and your claim.
- Get medical care first. See a doctor even if you feel able to walk away, because some injuries surface days later and the records start the paper trail your case runs on.
- Call the police. An officer at the scene documents the intoxication evidence that later proves the driver was drunk: the breathalyzer result, the field sobriety results, and the police report.
- Preserve evidence fast. Dram Shop claims depend on receipts, timelines, and witnesses that vanish quickly, so a bar’s role in over-serving the driver has to be traced while the trail is still there.
- Do not give the insurer a recorded statement. The adjuster will call within days sounding helpful, and anything you say can be used to shrink your claim.
- Call a drunk driving injury lawyer. The sooner someone is building your case, the more of the evidence above still exists.
This holds across the city, whichever borough you were driving in when the crash happened.
How Long You Have to File a Drunk Driving Claim in New York
A New York injury claim runs on more than one clock. For most drunk driving injuries, CPLR 214 gives you three years from the date of the crash to sue. If the crash killed someone, the wrongful death clock is shorter: EPTL 5-4.1 sets two years from the date of death for the family’s claim. And if a city or government vehicle or agency had any part in the crash, a much tighter rule takes over, because General Municipal Law 50-e requires a Notice of Claim within 90 days, long before the three-year window would otherwise matter. Miss the earliest deadline that applies to your case and the later ones can stop meaning anything, which is why the date of the crash is the first thing to tell a lawyer.
What It Costs to Hire a New York Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer
Nothing, unless your case wins. Silver Law Group works on a contingency fee, which means you pay no money upfront and no hourly bill while the case is open. The fee is a share of what you recover, taken only if there is a recovery; if the case brings in nothing, you owe no attorney’s fee. That arrangement lets an injured person hire the same quality of lawyer the insurance company already has, without money changing hands first.
The consultation that starts all of this is free and available 24 hours a day, in English, Spanish, or Russian. If your injuries make travel hard, the attorney will come to your home or hospital room instead of asking you to come to the office.
Why Injured New Yorkers Choose Silver Law Group
You get the terms that matter to an injured person from the first call. No fee unless you recover, so hiring the firm costs nothing while your case is open. A free consultation any hour of the day or night, in English, Spanish, or Russian. An attorney who comes to you when injuries make travel hard, and who prepares every case as if it will be tried, because the insurer settles differently with a lawyer who is ready for a courtroom.
The firm also chases every party that owes you, not just the driver. When a bar or restaurant over-served the person who hit you, that Dram Shop claim gets pursued too, across all five boroughs. If a drunk driver injured you in New York, the next step is a phone call that costs you nothing: 212-470-4544.