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Filing a Personal Injury Lawsuit Against the State of New York

The idea of suing an entity as large as New York State causes many clients—particularly those with little or no legal experience—to hesitate. However, if you believe that the State of New York is legally responsible for your injuries, it may be in your best interest to act quickly.

Unlike the typical personal injury case in New York—in which you have three years from the date of your accident to take legal action—suing New York State requires you to file a legal document called a notice of claim within 90 days—about three months—of your accident. Failure to file a notice of claim on time could cause your case to be dismissed.

All cases against the State of New York are handled in New York State’s Court of Claims, and they work differently from the typical personal injury case. Instead of being tried in front of a jury, they are heard by a state-employed judge who alone renders judgment on the case. This not only shifts the “audience” from a jury to a judge—a departure from what most trial lawyers are accustomed to and prefer—but also eliminates an attorney’s power to choose the audience best-suited to hearing your case through the art of jury selection. Everything rides on your attorney’s ability to communicate your case effectively to the Court of Claims judge.

Speaking with an attorney experienced in litigating cases against New York State will help you better understand your legal options. Below, we go over the process of suing the State of New York and discuss what makes these cases stand out from personal injury claims.

Need to Know:

  • New York State can be responsible for a wide variety of personal injury cases, including cases that involve injuries on state-owned property, like a state-owned or designed road, injuries caused by state employees, and issues of medical negligence at state-owned medical facilities.
  • A notice of claim must follow strict standards, and should be detailed and expansive enough to account for every possible direction your case might take.
  • If there are additional parties other than New York State involved in your case that you wish to hold responsible, you will need to file and resolve a second lawsuit outside of the Court of Claims. This may mean you are bringing two parallel lawsuits in two different courthouses from one accident. You don’t want an inexperienced attorney navigating that on your behalf.

In This Article:

When Can I Hold New York State Responsible?

Many scenarios involving New York State property or employees could lend themselves to a suit against the State of New York.

  • If, within the scope of his or her employment, an employee of the State of New York acts in such a way as to cause you injury, you may be able to hold the State of New York accountable. An obvious example would be a collision with a driver employed by New York State, who was on duty and acting within his or her official capacity at the time of your accident.
  • State-run medical facilities are held to the same standard of care as private facilities. Medical negligence by an employee of a state-owned hospital or medical care facility could be a cause for suing the State of New York.
  • Failure to maintain public property, such as state-owned roads, government buildings, and university campuses, could be a cause for a lawsuit against the State of New York. This includes maintenance issues such as loose carpeting, infrequently-salted roads, potholes, and poorly-maintained elevators. Negligent property design—for example, improperly-constructed thresholds which could cause a person to trip and fall—could also be grounds for a lawsuit.

Bear in mind that these are merely common examples, and that every injury case is unique. Only an experienced personal injury attorney can give you legal advice with regard to the nuances of your specific case, including whether the State of New York can be named as a defendant.

Filing a Notice of Claim: Meeting Strict Standards

In the United States, a doctrine known as “sovereign immunity” prevents people from suing government entities. New York State has waived its sovereign immunity, but your ability to sue the state is conditional on strict adherence to guidelines. That means not only filing your notice of claim on time, but filing it precisely.

A well-written notice of claim alerts the State of New York not only to its status as a potential defendant in your lawsuit, but to the precise nature of the damages you are claiming. Many cases are thrown out by the state based on a notice of claim perceived to be “deficient.”

What constitutes a deficient claim? Suppose you’re swimming in a pool on the premises of a state-owned university when your foot is caught in a drain, causing you to break your ankle. The accident causes you to suffer painful nerve damage that you fear may have lasting consequences for your mobility. 

If you’re like most people, your first thought is probably not of finding an attorney who has sued the State of New York before. Instead, you Google a phrase such as “pool drain injury,” searching for a lawyer who has handled cases that look like your own—regardless of the defendant.

Sure enough, you find an attorney who has handled several successful settlements on behalf of clients injured by drains and vents that were negligently left uncovered. Based on these experiences, this looks to her like a probable case of negligent maintenance: that is, a situation where your injury could have been avoided if a person responsible for maintaining the premises had done his or her job.

Anxious to meet the 90-day deadline, your attorney quickly files a notice of claim, alerting the State of New York that you intend to sue for negligent maintenance. From there, she proceeds with the discovery phase of your case. But discovery turns up something unexpected: your case isn’t a negligent maintenance case at all. Incredibly, the pool drain that injured you never had a cover in the first place. It was designed without one.

Anyone aware of your injury can see that this was a bad way to design a pool drain. You might even be able to find others who can testify that they were injured by the coverless drain themselves, or that they complained about the clear risk of injury it presented to swimmers, to no avail. So do you have a case for negligent design—a theory on which you may hold the State of New York liable for foreseeably dangerous design elements on their premises? Not if your attorney has already filed a notice of claim based solely on a theory of negligent maintenance.

It’s hard to foresee every possible direction that a case might take. But if you’re suing the State of New York, that’s exactly what your attorney has to do. His or her notice of claim should clearly account for each possible avenue by which you might be able to hold New York State accountable. Your attorney should not only have a deep reservoir of knowledge regarding New York State case law, but the creativity to know how to apply it—no matter what your case involves. 

Can I Sue Multiple Defendants?

In a typical personal injury case, the plaintiff—that is, the person who was injured—is permitted to sue multiple defendants as part of the same case. The plaintiff’s team may achieve results by finding one of these defendants responsible or by finding multiple defendants responsible and having each defendant contribute to the total result. It’s therefore standard for a plaintiff’s attorney to name multiple defendants in the same lawsuit, often narrowing down the responsible parties through the process of discovery.

If you’re filing a lawsuit in the New York Court of Claims, though, you won’t be able to name a defendant that isn’t associated with the State of New York. Instead, suing another party or parties will require you to file a whole separate lawsuit.

If you are aware of res judicata—a legal doctrine which prevents the same case from being litigated twice—you may be wondering if you can leverage the successful result of an additional lawsuit in your case against the State of New York.  However, applying res judicata depends upon identity of parties—that is, the idea that the parties involved in two lawsuits are either identical or have a sufficient affinity of interests to be functionally identical.

Therefore, while it’s theoretically possible that resolving an additional lawsuit could help your case with a New York State judge, there’s no guarantee that it will. A good attorney will help you to determine when and whether to pursue an additional lawsuit.

Case Study: $22,500,000 for Driver Following Head-On Collision on State-Owned Road

If the idea of having your entire case depend upon a single judge—one employed by the entity you are suing—sounds intimidating, it’s important to realize that a successful lawsuit against the City of New York is very possible with the help of thorough investigation. Such an investigation enabled our firm to achieve the largest personal injury settlement ever paid by a government entity in the history of New York State.

While driving on a road owned by the state, our client violently collided head-on with a car that drifted into the wrong lane. His injuries resulted in over 25 surgeries, left him with chronic pain, and permanently compromised his mobility—a devastating turn of events, not only for himself, but for his wife and his young son. 

Our client had been unable to move out of the path of the oncoming car because the road was slick with black ice. Although the State of New York disclaimed responsibility, partner Daniel O’Toole, who handled his case, made requests for the records of every accident that had ever occurred in that area.

What he found was eye-opening. Multiple accidents had occurred on the same spot—all due to the recurrent presence of ice at a low point in the road where water gathered and froze. The State had a responsibility to salt and sand the ice to prevent accidents, and its agents took this responsibility seriously—during the business week. Our client’s accident occurred on a weekend, at which time—by the State’s admission—no one was salting the ice.

As O’Toole pointed out, since weather doesn’t take the weekend off, persons with a non-delegable responsibility to provide basic protections for drivers shouldn’t either. Because of his efforts, O’Toole was able to obtain a liability verdict finding the State 100% responsible for our client’s injuries. He proceeded with a damages trial and was able to settle for $22,500,000 on behalf of our client and his family. The amount included $11 million for the hard-to-price category of “pain and suffering,” as well as two years of accumulated interest following the liability verdict.

Free Legal Consultation

Personal injury cases against a municipality come with particular nuances and case proceedings. It’s important to realize that no case arrives at our door looking bulletproof: even the best are assembled through hard and careful work. Our knowledgeable lawyers offer free case reviews to accident victims in New York.

To speak with a Block O’Toole & Murphy attorney, call 212-736-5300 or fill out our online contact form.

 

 

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