Syracuse · Cicero · Cortland & Central New York
Personal injury lawyers serving Syracuse and Central New York
If someone else's carelessness put you in a hospital bed, you should not also be fighting an insurance company alone.
We represent people hurt in car, truck and boating crashes, motorcycle collisions, falls on badly maintained property, construction site accidents and dog bites, across Onondaga and Cortland counties. Some injuries at work go through New York's workers' compensation system instead, and we can usually tell you which applies to your situation in a single phone call.
There is no charge for the first conversation, and there is never any obligation to hire us.
What we handle
Car and truck collisions
Rear-end and intersection crashes, distracted driving, and claims against an uninsured or underinsured driver.
Read more →Motorcycle collisions
Motorcyclists are outside the no-fault system in New York, which changes how the claim is built from the first day.
Read more →Boating collisions
Oneida Lake, Skaneateles and the Finger Lakes. Different rules, different insurer, and often a different investigating agency.
Read more →Slip, trip and fall
Ice, unlit stairs, broken walkways. Whoever controlled the property is the question, and the evidence disappears quickly.
Read more →Construction site falls
New York’s Labor Law gives injured workers rights beyond workers compensation, against the owner and the general contractor.
Read more →Injured at work
Compensation is the only claim against your employer — but on most work injuries somebody else is involved, and that claim is separate.
Read more →Dog bites and animal attacks
The law changed in April 2025. There are now two routes — strict liability and ordinary negligence — where there used to be one.
Read more →Talk to someone today
The first conversation is free and there is no obligation.
How an injury claim actually works in New York
Most people expect one process. In a motor vehicle case there are two, they run on different tracks, and confusing them is where a lot of avoidable damage happens.
First: no-fault pays the bills
New York is a no-fault state for motor vehicle injuries. Your own insurer pays your medical treatment and part of your lost wages regardless of who caused the crash. These are called first-party benefits, and Insurance Law § 5102(a) sets what they cover.
| What no-fault covers | Limit |
|---|---|
| All necessary medical and rehabilitation expenses | No separate sub-limit, paid from the $50,000 total |
| Lost earnings | 80% of what you lost, up to $2,000 a month, for up to three years |
| Other reasonable and necessary expenses | Up to $25 a day, for up to one year |
| Basic economic loss, total | $50,000 per person |
| Optional basic economic loss (OBEL) | A further $25,000 if it was purchased on the policy |
From the text of Insurance Law § 5102(a) and (b). The lost earnings figure is the statutory 80% of actual loss, subject to the monthly cap.
Two things about this catch people out. Motorcyclists are outside no-fault entirely, the statute's definition of a covered vehicle excludes them, so a motorcycle claim has no first-party medical benefits standing behind it. And there are short filing deadlines set by regulation for the no-fault application itself, separate from anything to do with a lawsuit.
Second: the lawsuit, if the threshold is met
No-fault does not pay for pain and suffering. To recover that from the other driver you have to clear what the statute calls a serious injury, defined at Insurance Law § 5102(d).
- Death
- Dismemberment
- Significant disfigurement
- A fracture
- Loss of a fetus
- Permanent loss of use of a body organ, member, function or system
- Permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member
- Significant limitation of use of a body function or system
Medical bills and lost wages are not subject to this. The threshold governs non-economic damages only. There is a fuller explanation of how the two systems fit together, and of the deadlines that end claims early, on our page about no-fault and the serious injury threshold.
This changed on May 26, 2026
Part EE of Chapter 58 of the Laws of 2026 deleted the ninth category, the one covering a medically determined non-permanent injury that prevented you from performing substantially all of your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the 180 days after the crash.
That category had been the ordinary route for injuries that were real and disabling but left no fracture and no permanent finding. It applies to actions commenced on or after May 26, 2026. Material written before that date still describes it as available.
Fault: a second change in the same statute
New York has long been a pure comparative fault state, meaning a share of blame reduced what you recovered but never wiped it out. The same May 2026 legislation added CPLR § 1411(b), which changes that for motor vehicle cases.
In a personal injury action subject to Insurance Law Article 51, your recovery is now barred entirely if your share of fault is greater than the combined fault of everyone you are claiming against. Below that line, the old rule still operates, your recovery is reduced in proportion to your share.
Note the limit of it. The bar is written for Article 51, the no-fault article, so it reaches motor vehicle claims. A fall on someone's property or a dog bite is not an Article 51 case, and comparative fault there continues to reduce recovery rather than end it. If you have read that being partly at fault does not bar a claim in New York, that is still true outside the motor vehicle context and no longer reliably true inside it.
Two further pieces of the same act are worth knowing about: a new § 5104(d) caps non-economic damages at $100,000 for an at-fault injured person in three specific situations, driving uninsured when you were the one responsible for insuring the vehicle, driving impaired and being convicted of it, or driving in the commission of a felony and being convicted, and the cap does not apply where the injuries resulted in death. And § 5104(a) now requires a jury to decide fault first, before deciding whether the injury is a serious injury.
Deadlines
| Kind of claim | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Most personal injury claims | 3 years from the injury — CPLR § 214(5) |
| Wrongful death | 2 years from the date of death |
| Against a city, county, town, village, fire or school district, notice of claim | 90 days from when the claim arises — GML § 50-e |
| Against those same public bodies, the action itself | 1 year and 90 days — GML § 50-i |
The municipal one is the trap. A sworn notice of claim inside ninety days is a condition of being allowed to sue at all, and ninety days runs out long before most people have finished treating. A court may allow a late notice on application, but that is a motion you have to win, not a right, and the extension cannot run past the limitation period.
If you were hurt on a public road, in a public building, on a school property or by a municipal vehicle, that clock is already running. It is the strongest reason not to wait and see how the injury settles down.
Hurt at work
An injury on the job usually goes through workers' compensation, a separate system with its own forms, its own board and its own deadlines. It pays medical treatment and a portion of lost wages without anyone having to prove the employer was careless, and in exchange it generally does not pay for pain and suffering.
What people miss is that the two can overlap. If someone other than your employer contributed to the injury, a subcontractor on the same site, a driver who hit you while you were working, the manufacturer of a machine. There may be a claim against that party running alongside the compensation case. Construction sites in particular tend to have several companies responsible for the same condition.
Tell us how it happened and who else was on site. That is usually enough to say which system you are in.
What to do now
Get treatment and keep going to it, gaps in treatment are the first thing an insurer points at. Report the crash to your own insurer and get the no-fault application in. Photograph what you can while it still exists, particularly a hazard on a property, because it will be repaired. And be careful about a recorded statement to the other side's insurer before you have spoken to a lawyer.
Then call us. The first conversation is free, and if the answer is that you do not need a lawyer, we will tell you that.
Questions people ask
How long do I have to bring an injury claim in New York?
Three years from the date of the injury for most negligence claims, under CPLR section 214(5). Wrongful death runs two years from the date of death. Claims against a city, county, town, village or school district are far shorter and are described below.
What is different about suing a municipality?
Two deadlines apply instead of one. A sworn notice of claim must be served within ninety days of the claim arising, and the action itself must be commenced within one year and ninety days. Missing the ninety-day notice can end a claim that would otherwise have years left.
What is the serious injury threshold?
In a motor vehicle case you cannot recover for pain and suffering unless the injury falls into one of the categories listed in Insurance Law section 5102(d). Medical bills and lost wages go through no-fault regardless. The threshold governs non-economic damages only.
Did the serious injury rules change in 2026?
Yes. Part EE of Chapter 58 of the Laws of 2026 removed the ninety-out-of-one-hundred-eighty-days category from the definition, effective for actions commenced on or after May 26, 2026. That category had been the ordinary route for injuries that were genuinely disabling but left no fracture and no permanent finding, so its removal matters most in soft tissue cases.
What happens if I was partly at fault for a car crash?
For motor vehicle claims commenced on or after May 26, 2026, CPLR section 1411(b) bars recovery where your share of fault is greater than the combined fault of everyone you are claiming against. Below that line, your recovery is reduced by your share rather than eliminated.
Does that same fault rule apply to a slip and fall?
No. The new bar is written to apply to personal injury actions subject to Insurance Law Article 51, which is the motor vehicle no-fault article. Outside that, New York comparative fault under CPLR section 1411 continues to reduce recovery rather than bar it.
Is my injury at work a personal injury case?
Often it is a workers compensation matter instead, which is a separate system with its own forms and deadlines. Some job injuries involve a third party as well, and then both can run at once. Tell us how it happened and we will tell you which applies.
What does the first conversation cost?
Nothing. The first consultation is free and there is no obligation to hire us afterwards, whatever we tell you in it. Both offices have free parking, and you can reach us by phone, by text, or through the form on this page, whichever is easiest.
Serving both counties
We work out of two offices — Cicero, about ten miles north of downtown Syracuse, and Cortland. Between them we cover Onondaga and Cortland counties and the towns in between.
What is specific to a claim in the city, the Upstate trauma records, what changes when a public body such as Centro or the County is the defendant, and the ninety-day deadline that catches people, is on our Syracuse personal injury page.
Cicero, NY
8432 Brewerton Road, Suite 100
Cicero, NY 13039
Mon–Fri 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM · Saturday by appointment · Sunday closed
Free parking.
Cortland, NY
4030 West Road (Route 281)
Cortland, NY 13045
Mon–Fri 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM · Saturday by appointment · Sunday closed
Free parking.
Sources
NY Insurance Law § 5102 — Definitions ·§ 5104 — Causes of action for personal injury ·NYS DFS Insurance Circular Letter No. 3 (2026) — Motor Vehicle Insurance Reforms ·CPLR § 214 ·GML § 50-e ·GML § 50-i
Statutory text verified August 2026. The 2026 amendments described above are set out in the DFS circular letter, which is the Department of Financial Services' own account of what Chapter 58 changed. This page describes what the law provides. It is not advice about your own case, and whether any deadline, threshold or defense applies to you depends on facts this page cannot know.