Deadlines for Injury Claims in New York

How long do you have to sue in New York?

Three years for most injury claims, but the exceptions are the whole story. CPLR 214(5) sets the general rule. Medical malpractice is two years and six months. Intentional torts are one year. Wrongful death is two years. And if the defendant is a public body, you may have as little as 90 days to take the first required step.

Almost every case that is lost on timing is lost because someone assumed the three-year rule applied when it did not.

What are the actual deadlines?

Claim	Deadline	Clock starts
Negligence, car accident, slip and fall	3 years	Date of injury
Medical, dental or podiatric malpractice	2 years 6 months	The negligent act, or the last date of continuous treatment
Foreign object left in the body	1 year	Discovery of the object
Assault, battery, false imprisonment	1 year	Date of the act
Defamation	1 year	First publication
Wrongful death	2 years	Date of death, not injury
Product liability	3 years	Date of injury, not date of sale
Construction Labor Law claims	3 years	Date of the accident
City, county, town, village or school district	90-day notice, then 1 year 90 days	Date of the event
The State of New York	90 days, in the Court of Claims	Accrual of the claim

When does the clock actually start?

This decides more cases than the length of the period does, and New York’s answer is unforgiving.

There is no general discovery rule. The clock runs from the date you were injured, even if you did not know you were injured and could not reasonably have known. The Court of Appeals settled this long ago: the period begins “from the time when liability for wrong has arisen even though the injured party may be ignorant of the existence of the wrong or injury.”

Discovery-based accrual exists only in narrow statutory pockets, chiefly latent toxic exposure, a foreign object left in the body, and cancer misdiagnosis. Everything else runs from the injury.

One more mechanical point people get wrong: a case is commenced by filing, not by serving. Filing on the last day is timely. Serving on the last day is not.

Why is medical malpractice shorter?

CPLR 214-a gives two years and six months, running from the negligent act or from the last date of continuous treatment for the same condition.

Continuous treatment is a toll, and it is narrower than it sounds:

• There must have been an actual course of treatment for the condition. A failure to diagnose, where no treatment was ever established, does not qualify.
• Further treatment must be anticipated by both doctor and patient.
• Routine or diagnostic examinations are not a course of treatment.
• Gaps between visits, and “come back as needed” scheduling, do not automatically break it.

Note also that chiropractors and most other professionals are not covered by 214-a. Malpractice other than medical, dental or podiatric gets the ordinary three years.

Is there a discovery rule for a missed cancer diagnosis?

Yes, and it has hard limits. Lavern’s Law, effective 31 January 2018, allows a claim for failure to diagnose cancer or a malignant tumor to be brought within two years and six months of when the person knew or should have known both of the negligence and that it caused injury.

Two ceilings apply:

• An outer cap of seven years from the negligent act, no matter when discovery occurred.
• It reaches back only to acts occurring on or after 31 July 2015. Its brief revival window for already-expired claims closed in 2018.

Is wrongful death two years or three?

Two years, and this is the most dangerous piece of misinformation currently circulating about New York injury law.

EPTL 5-4.1 gives two years from the date of death. The Grieving Families Act, which would have extended it to three years and expanded recoverable damages, has been passed by the Legislature and vetoed four separate times, most recently on 5 December 2025.

Because the 2025 passage was widely reported and the December veto was not, a number of sources still describe the three-year period as though it were law. It is not. Damages also remain limited to pecuniary injuries, which excludes grief and loss of companionship.

Two further traps:

• Only the estate’s personal representative can sue, so letters must be obtained from Surrogate’s Court first, and that takes time out of the two years.
• If the decedent’s own claim was already time-barred when they died, death does not revive it. The wrongful death action exists only if the decedent could have sued at the moment of death.

What if the defendant is a government body?

Everything compresses, and there are two separate requirements, not one.

	Private defendant	Public entity
Notice of claim	None	90 days
Time to sue	3 years	1 year and 90 days
Wrongful death	2 years	2 years, notice from appointment of the representative

Serving the notice does not extend the time to sue, and suing on time does not cure a missing notice. Worse, the ability to ask a court for permission to serve a late notice expires when the one year and 90 days does. After that, nothing can be done.

The 50-h examination does not pause anything either. The statute says so expressly. See our fuller guide on the notice of claim requirement.

Do children get more time?

Usually, with one important exception.

CPLR 208(a) tolls the period during infancy, so an ordinary negligence claim generally runs until three years after the eighteenth birthday.

Medical, dental and podiatric malpractice is different. A ten-year cap applies from the date the claim accrued, and it overrides the infancy toll. A birth injury claim can expire when the child is ten, long before adulthood. This surprises families constantly and it is not fixable after the fact.

What about a bus, a train or a hospital?

Whether an entity is public is often not obvious, and the answer changes the deadline by years.

• The MTA: 90-day notice, then one year and 90 days.
• The Long Island Rail Road: as an MTA subsidiary it is exempt from the notice of claim requirement for ordinary injury claims, though a separate 30-day demand must be made and pleaded. Because this cuts against common practice, the cautious course is to serve anyway. Wrongful death against the LIRR does require a notice of claim.
• NICE bus: a brand name rather than a suable entity. Claims run against Nassau County and the contract operator, and a notice of claim is required.
• Nassau University Medical Center: a public benefit corporation. A 90-day notice applies and suit must be brought within one year and 90 days, which is shorter than the ordinary malpractice period and governs over it.
• School districts: 90 days, then one year and 90 days. Charter schools are outside the requirement.

Filing a no-fault application with an insurer is not a notice of claim and does not satisfy it.

What is prior written notice, and why does it end sidewalk cases?

Separately from the notice of claim, most Nassau municipalities require that the government have received prior written notice of the specific defect before the accident. Without it, the case is barred no matter how dangerous the condition was.

Nassau County requires that written notice go by certified or registered mail to the County Attorney, and the requirement covers sidewalks, streets, parking fields, stairways, ramps, curbs, and snow and ice. The three towns have their own codes, and Hempstead and Oyster Bay require that the notice come from someone who actually witnessed the condition. Long Beach requires notice at least 48 hours before the occurrence and expressly includes the boardwalk. Glen Cove amended its code in 2025 to state that email, the city website, a reporting app and social media do not count.

There are two recognized exceptions: where the municipality affirmatively created the defect, and where it made special use of the area.

What do people get wrong most often?

• “Everything is three years.” Not malpractice, intentional torts, wrongful death, or any public defendant.
• “A car accident is always three years.” Not if the other vehicle was a county, town, school or transit vehicle.
• “The clock starts when I found out.” Only in a few statutory pockets.
• “Filing the notice of claim protects the case.” It is a separate requirement that extends nothing.
• “School districts get 30 days.” Tort claims get 90.
• “Serving the papers meets the deadline.” Filing does.
• “An infant always has until 21.” Not for medical malpractice.

Two other timing rules are not statutes of limitations but will still cost you money if missed: no-fault requires written notice to the insurer within 30 days of the crash, and medical proof of claim within 45 days of services.

Where these cases are heard in Nassau County

Injury actions are filed with the Nassau County Clerk and heard in Supreme Court, Nassau County, at 100 Supreme Court Drive in Mineola. Nassau sits in the Tenth Judicial District with Suffolk, and appeals go to the Appellate Division, Second Department. Claims against the State of New York go instead to the Court of Claims, on its own much shorter schedule.

Because several of these deadlines can expire before an injured person has finished treatment, the practical advice is simple: find out early which one applies to your case.

Related: notice of claim requirements, the serious injury threshold, and personal injury representation on Long Island.