A Westchester car accident lawyer at Silver Law Group can start work on your claim today, while the evidence from your crash still exists. Call 212-470-4544 for a free consultation. The line is answered 24 hours a day.
We represent people hurt in car crashes across Westchester County, New York. That includes Yonkers and Mount Vernon on the Bronx line, New Rochelle and White Plains, and Peekskill on the Hudson. New York’s car crash rules don’t work the way most people expect.
Your own insurer pays your first medical bills. You can sue the other driver for pain and suffering only if your injury passes a legal threshold. A crash on a state parkway may also send part of your case to a court with no jury. The sections below explain each rule in the order it will affect you.
Do You Have a Car Accident Case in Westchester County?
You have a case if another driver’s negligence caused the crash and the crash caused your injury. Negligence means the driver failed to drive as a reasonably careful person would. In car crashes it usually looks like one of these:
- Following too closely and rear-ending you in stop-and-go traffic
- Running a red light or a stop sign
- Merging or changing lanes without checking that the lane was clear
- Looking at a phone instead of the road
- Drifting over the center line into oncoming cars
The driver is not the only one who can be held responsible. Under Vehicle and Traffic Law 388, a car’s owner is liable for injuries caused by anyone who drives it with the owner’s permission. If the driver who hit you was using a parent’s car or a company vehicle, the owner’s policy is also on the hook. That matters when the driver’s own coverage is thin or doesn’t exist.
Shared fault does not end your claim. CPLR 1411 sets a rule of pure comparative fault, so your share of the blame reduces your damages but never wipes them out. If a jury finds you 20 percent at fault for braking late on Central Park Avenue, you keep 80 percent of the award.
Even a driver found mostly at fault can recover the remaining share. That is why you should never admit fault to an adjuster before a car accident attorney has gone over the facts.
No-Fault Benefits Pay First
Your own auto policy pays your medical bills and lost wages first, no matter who caused the crash. Insurance Law 5102(a) sets this basic economic loss coverage at up to $50,000 per person. It pays for medical treatment and lost earnings without anyone having to prove fault.
There is a deadline. Under 11 NYCRR 65-1.1, you must send a written no-fault application within 30 days of the crash. An insurer can deny a late application, and then the medical bills come back to you.
File it even if the injury seems minor. You can always stop treating, but a missed 30-day window is hard to explain later.
Meeting the Serious Injury Threshold
Insurance Law 5104 bars a suit for pain and suffering against the at-fault driver unless your injury counts as a “serious injury” under Insurance Law 5102(d). These are the categories that come up most often in car crash cases:
- A fracture of any bone
- Significant disfigurement, such as visible scarring on the face
- Permanent limitation of a body organ, member, function or system, including a permanent consequential limitation
- A 90/180-day disability, meaning a medically documented injury that kept you from substantially all of your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the first 180 days after the crash
A fracture shows up on an X-ray, and insurers rarely contest it. The fight is over the other categories. Neck, back and soft-tissue injuries need objective proof, such as MRI findings and measured loss of range of motion recorded by a treating doctor soon after the crash.
Expect the defense to send you to its own doctor, who will often say you have recovered. Steady treatment records are what answer that report.
Westchester Roads Where Car Crashes Happen
Westchester’s crash load is concentrated on a few busy corridors, and each one tends to produce its own kind of collision.
- I-287, the Cross Westchester Expressway, carries commuters between the Hudson and Port Chester through White Plains. Rush-hour stop-and-go causes chain rear-end crashes, and on-ramp merges cause sideswipes.
- Route 9A mixes highway speeds with side-road entrances, so cars pulling out get hit broadside.
- Route 22 runs north from White Plains through two-lane stretches where one car drifting over the line means a head-on collision.
- Central Park Avenue through Yonkers and Greenburgh is lined with shopping-center driveways. Left turns across traffic and sudden stops are typical there.
- Boston Post Road through New Rochelle and Mamaroneck packs intersections, parked cars and pedestrians into short blocks.
Wrong-way crashes on divided roads are the most violent, because the two cars’ speeds add together at impact. The first question a head-on car crash lawyer has to answer is how the other car got into your lane. The answer could be a missed exit, a confusing ramp or a driver who fell asleep, and each one points to a different defendant.
For crash numbers, we use only the Traffic Safety Statistical Repository (TSSR) run by the Institute for Traffic Safety Management and Research (ITSMR), which breaks New York crash data down by county. A history of crashes at the same spot can show that the road itself played a part. That matters for who you can sue, as the next section explains.
Car Crashes on State Parkways, County Roads and the Thruway
The owner of the road decides where part of your case is heard. Your claim against the other driver always goes through the regular courts. If a defect in the road helped cause the crash, such as a broken guardrail or a drain that floods the travel lane, the road’s owner can be a second defendant.
The Saw Mill River, Hutchinson River, Sprain Brook, Taconic State and Cross County parkways are owned by New York State. A claim against the State goes to the New York Court of Claims, where a judge decides the case without a jury. That changes how the case is built, because you are persuading one judge rather than a panel of six jurors.
The Bronx River Parkway is different. Westchester County maintains it, so a road-condition claim there is brought against the County. It starts with a Notice of Claim and is heard in the regular courts.
The Thruway and the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge belong to the New York State Thruway Authority. Public Authorities Law 361-b sends claims against the Authority to the Court of Claims under the same no-jury rules. All three owners have deadlines far shorter than the usual three years. They are listed below, and they are the reason road ownership should be checked in the first week.
What Your Westchester Car Accident Claim Is Worth
New York does not cap damages in car crash cases. What you can recover depends on what the injury has cost you so far and what it will cost you later:
- Medical costs beyond no-fault, including surgery, therapy and future care after the basic economic loss coverage runs out
- Lost earnings above what no-fault paid, plus lost future earning capacity if you can’t go back to the same work
- Pain and suffering, past and future, once your injury meets the serious injury threshold
The real limit is usually insurance. Vehicle and Traffic Law 311 requires New York drivers to carry at least $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident in bodily injury coverage, and many drivers carry exactly that. If your losses are higher, the owner’s policy under VTL 388 may add another source of payment.
When the at-fault policy still falls short, Supplementary Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist (SUM) coverage on your own policy can cover the gap, up to your SUM limit. Look at your declarations page now. An automobile accident attorney should read that page before anyone puts a value on your claim. No honest lawyer can give you a figure at the first meeting, before your doctors know whether the injury is permanent.
Fatal Car Accidents in Westchester County
Only the personal representative of the person who died can file a wrongful death claim. In Westchester, the Westchester County Surrogate’s Court appoints that representative. If your family member left a will, the named executor applies. If there was no will, a close relative petitions to be appointed administrator, and our fatal accident lawyers can start that petition while the crash investigation is under way.
EPTL 5-4.1 gives the representative two years from the date of death to sue. The claim can recover:
- The financial support the person would have given the family
- Funeral and burial costs
- Damages for the conscious pain the person suffered between the crash and death, brought on behalf of the estate
Proof of conscious pain often comes from EMS and emergency room notes recording that the person was awake or responding. We request those records first.
What Happens After You Call Our Car Accident Attorneys
How much evidence survives depends largely on the first week after a crash. Here is the order we work in:
- We confirm that the MV-104 Report of Motor Vehicle Accident goes to the DMV within 10 days. New York requires drivers to file it when anyone is injured.
- We file your no-fault application within the 30-day window.
- We request your records from Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, the region’s Level I trauma center, and from every provider who treated you afterward. Trauma-bay notes from the first hour are often the clearest record of how badly you were hurt.
- We collect the police report, photographs, witness names and any camera footage before it is recorded over.
- If the insurer won’t pay a fair amount, we file your car accident lawsuit in Westchester County Supreme Court, 111 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., White Plains.
Personal injury trials in New York are often bifurcated, meaning they are split into two parts. The jury first decides liability, which means who caused the crash. A second phase on damages happens only if the defendant is found at fault. We prepare for both phases from the start, because insurers judge a claim partly by how ready the lawyer is for trial.
What a Westchester Car Accident Lawyer Costs
You pay nothing upfront to hire us. Silver Law Group works on a contingency fee, which works like this:
- No retainer and no hourly bills while your case is open
- Our fee is a percentage of what we recover, agreed in writing before we start
- It is paid only out of the settlement or verdict, at the end of the case
- If we recover nothing, you owe us no fee
We carry the work of building your case, and we are paid only if you are.
How Long You Have to File a Westchester Car Accident Lawsuit
The standard deadline is three years, but a crash involving a government-owned road or vehicle cuts it much shorter.
- CPLR 214 gives you three years from the crash to sue the at-fault driver and the car’s owner.
- If a Westchester County vehicle, a City of Yonkers vehicle or the County-maintained Bronx River Parkway played a part, General Municipal Law 50-e requires a Notice of Claim within 90 days.
- After that notice, GML 50-i requires the lawsuit itself within one year and 90 days of the crash.
- For claims involving State parkways or the Thruway Authority, Court of Claims Act 10(3) requires you to file and serve a claim within 90 days. The other option is to serve a notice of intention within 90 days and then file the claim within two years.
- Wrongful death claims follow the two-year rule in EPTL 5-4.1 described above.
A Notice of Claim has to describe when, where and how the claim arose in enough detail for the government to investigate. If you wait until the second month to call a lawyer, there is very little time left on a 90-day clock.
Why Westchester Drivers Call Silver Law Group
Every case starts with a free consultation, and that first conversation costs you nothing even if you don’t hire us. Here is what you get when you call:
- Consultations in English, Spanish and Russian
- A phone line answered 24/7, including the night of the crash
- An attorney who comes to your home in Yonkers or Peekskill, or to your bedside at Westchester Medical Center, so you don’t have to travel while you’re hurt
- Trial-ready preparation of every case, starting with the first records request
- No fee unless we recover for you
Our office is at 49 West 37th Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Call 212-470-4544 and tell a car crash lawyer the road and the date of your crash. Those two facts show which deadlines already apply to you.