Do You Have a Wrongful Death Case in New York
You have a claim when the person who died could have sued for their own injuries had they lived. That is the test New York applies: if a driver, doctor, property owner, or manufacturer would have owed your loved one a personal injury case, the family can bring that same case as a wrongful death claim after the death.
Proving it means proving negligence, the same four elements a hurt survivor would have to show. The at-fault party owed a duty of care. They breached it. That breach caused the death. And the death produced measurable losses. You prove each one by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning it is more likely than not — a lower bar than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard from criminal court.
Partial fault does not end the claim. Under New York’s pure comparative negligence rule, CPLR §1411, if your loved one was found partly responsible for what happened, the recovery is reduced by that percentage but never wiped out. A person judged 30 percent at fault still leaves the family able to recover the other 70 percent. New York is one of the few states that lets a family recover even when the person who died carried most of the blame.
Types of Wrongful Death Cases We Handle Across New York
Most of the fatal cases we handle across New York start on the road. New York City recorded 205 traffic deaths in 2025 — the fewest since the city began counting in 1910, and still nearly four families a week who lost someone. Car, truck, motorcycle, pedestrian, and bicycle crashes make up the largest share of the wrongful death claims families bring to us.
The rest come from other kinds of negligence. Construction and workplace deaths often fall under New York Labor Law §240 and §241, which hold contractors and property owners strictly responsible for certain height-related and site-safety hazards. Medical malpractice takes lives through missed diagnoses, surgical errors, and medication mistakes. Nursing home neglect kills through bedsores, dehydration, falls, and untreated infection. Premises liability covers deaths from unsafe buildings, and defective products cover deaths caused by machinery, vehicles, or goods that were dangerous by design. If a preventable act of carelessness took your family member, there is likely a category of claim that fits.
Wrongful Death vs Survival Action in New York
New York gives your family two separate claims after a fatal accident, and most cases bring both. They pay for different losses, and confusing them costs money.
The wrongful death claim, under EPTL §5-4.1, belongs to the surviving family. It pays for what your family lost when the income, support, and services your loved one provided disappeared. The measure is the family’s financial loss, not the pain of the person who died.
The survival action, under EPTL §11-3.2, belongs to the estate and stands in for the person who died. It recovers what your loved one themselves suffered between the moment of injury and death — the conscious pain, and in many cases the pre-impact terror of seeing a crash about to happen. If death was not instant, this claim can be substantial, and it is the one most competitor pages leave out. Bringing both together is how a family recovers for the full harm rather than half of it.
Who Can File a Wrongful Death Claim in New York
Not every grieving relative can file. Under EPTL §5-4.1, only the personal representative of the estate — the executor named in a will, or an administrator appointed by the court when there is no will — has the legal standing to bring the wrongful death claim.
If no estate exists yet, one has to be opened first, and the court has to appoint that representative before the lawsuit can start. We handle this step for families so it does not become another delay on top of the grief.
Whatever the representative recovers does not go to them personally. It is distributed among the distributees — usually the surviving spouse, children, and parents — in proportion to the financial loss each one suffered. This standing rule comes from state law, so it works the same whether the case is filed in the Bronx or on Staten Island.
What Is a New York Wrongful Death Case Worth
New York limits wrongful death damages to pecuniary losses, the economic value of what the family lost. That includes the income and financial support your loved one would have provided, the loss of a parent’s guidance and nurture for surviving children, funeral and burial costs, medical bills from the final injury, the value of household services the person performed, and the inheritance the family would have received had they lived.
What New York does not allow is money for grief itself. As of now, the state remains one of only two — Alabama is the other — that bars families from recovering for their emotional loss and anguish. The Grieving Families Act would have changed that, but Governor Hochul vetoed it for the fourth time on December 5, 2025, so the pecuniary-only rule still governs every case filed today.
The survival action is where suffering enters the math, and it is separate. The conscious pain your loved one endured before death is a recoverable item under that claim, even though the family’s own grief is not. Because the two claims stack, the honest answer to what a case is worth is that it depends — on the lost support, the length of conscious suffering, and the strength of the liability proof. We do not put a price tag on a page. We look at your family’s specific losses in a free evaluation and tell you what the claim realistically covers.
What Happens After You Hire a New York Wrongful Death Lawyer
The first step is the free consultation, where we listen to what happened and tell you whether you have a claim. Nothing is owed to move forward.
From there, if no estate is open, we open it and get the representative appointed so the case has someone with standing to file. Then the investigation starts. We reconstruct the accident, pull medical and police records, and bring in the experts a wrongful death case needs — accident reconstructionists, treating physicians, economists who calculate lost support. That evidence is what establishes liability: whose negligence caused the death, and how the proof holds together.
Once liability is built, we file the lawsuit and open negotiations. From the day you hire us, we handle every conversation with the insurance company, so no adjuster calls your family for a recorded statement during the worst weeks of your life. Most cases settle. But we prepare each one as if it will be tried, because an insurer that knows the file is trial-ready does not get away with lowballing a grieving family. If the offer never becomes fair, we take it to a jury.
What It Costs to Hire a New York Wrongful Death Lawyer
Nothing, unless we win. Silver Law Group takes wrongful death cases on contingency, which means our fee comes only as a percentage of the settlement or verdict we recover for your family. There is no money up front, no hourly billing, and no retainer to write a check for. If we recover nothing, you owe us no attorney’s fee at all — the risk of the case sits with the firm, not with your family.
The consultation that starts it is free, so learning where you stand costs you nothing during a stretch when money is already tight. Grief is enough to carry. The bill for a lawyer should not be part of it.
How Long You Have to File a Wrongful Death Claim in New York
The controlling deadline is two years. Under EPTL §5-4.1, a wrongful death lawsuit has to be filed within two years of the date of death, not the date of the accident, and once it passes the claim is gone no matter how strong it was.
Other clocks can run shorter or longer inside that window. If the death came from medical malpractice, that claim carries its own limit under CPLR §214-a, generally two and a half years. And if a New York City agency, the MTA, or a public hospital may be at fault, a Notice of Claim has to be served under General Municipal Law §50-e within 90 days of the death — far shorter than two years, and easy to miss while a family is still planning a funeral. Missing it can bar an otherwise valid case against the city. This is why calling early matters: overlapping deadlines are easiest to protect before the shortest one runs.
Why Families Across New York Choose Silver Law Group
Families choose Silver Law Group for a short list of concrete reasons. You pay no fee unless we recover, so hiring us costs nothing to try. Consultations are free and available 24/7, in English, Spanish, and Russian, so language and timing never keep you from getting answers. We prepare every case for trial, which is what keeps insurers from treating a wrongful death claim as a number to shave down. And when getting to a law office is the last thing your family can manage, the attorney comes to you.
Our office sits at 49 West 37th Street in Midtown Manhattan, and from there we handle claims for families in every borough. What you get is steady, aggressive advocacy from someone who treats the loss as more than a file — and the patience, when you are the one grieving, to explain each step in plain terms.
Speak With a New York Wrongful Death Lawyer Today
The call is free, confidential, and carries no obligation. Talk through what happened with a New York wrongful death lawyer, and you will leave the conversation knowing whether you have a claim and what it involves, with no fee unless we recover for your family and help available 24/7 in English, Spanish, and Russian.
The two-year deadline is quietly running from the date of death, and the evidence that proves fault gets harder to gather as weeks pass. Call 212-470-4544 when you are ready. There is no wrong time, and someone is here to answer.