Straight answers, no legalese

Three things that changed while nobody was updating their website

Most of what is published about New York law, including on law firm sites, describes the version of the rule that was true when the page was written. Nobody goes back. That is the single most common reason a confident answer found online is wrong.

Three rules that affect ordinary cases around here moved inside eighteen months. Each one is dated on the article that covers it, and each article names the source it was checked against.

Car accident claims, May 2026

Two changes, and the second one surprises people. New York deleted a whole category from the serious injury threshold, the one often called the 90/180 rule, so a route to compensation that existed before is gone. Separately, the comparative fault rule for motor vehicle claims changed, and being mostly at fault can now end a claim rather than just reduce it.

Which version applies to you turns on your filing date rather than the date of the crash, which is the detail that decides cases and the one most summaries leave out. What changed for car accident claims in 2026.

Speeding tickets, February 16, 2026

The DMV changed point values, and it moved one of the two lookback windows from 18 months to 24. Work zone violations now carry a flat 8 points whatever the speed. A great deal of what is written online still describes the old schedule, including the point totals people use to work out whether they are close to a suspension. How many points a speeding ticket is in New York.

Dog bites, 2025

New York had a rule that made dog bite claims unusually hard to win, and Flanders v Goodfellow changed it. The interesting part is not the holding but the proof problem underneath it: what the owners swore they had never seen, and what two mail carriers on the same route swore they had. New York dog bite law changed in 2025.

How to check any of this yourself

You should not have to take a law firm's word for what a statute says, and on this site you do not have to. Every page that states a rule, a penalty, a fee or a deadline names its source and the date the figure was checked. These are the same places we look:

• The statute itself. NY Senate publishes the full text of the Vehicle and Traffic Law, the Domestic Relations Law and the rest, free.
• Points and license penalties. The NYS DMV point system page is the authority on what a conviction carries.
• Which court, and when it sits. The Unified Court System locator gives addresses and phone numbers. Go by the address on your paperwork, not the court's name. We keep local lists for Onondaga County and Cortland County.

One habit worth having: check the date next to any legal figure you read anywhere, including here. If a page does not tell you when it was last checked, that is information about the page.

If your question is not here

Call and ask. The first conversation is free, there is no obligation, and if the answer is that you do not need a lawyer we would rather tell you that on the phone than after an appointment.

The practice pages go deeper than these articles do: traffic tickets, personal injury, criminal defense, uncontested divorce, real estate and bankruptcy.