NYC Catastrophic Injury Lawyer

A catastrophic injury changes everything in a single moment. If you or someone you love has been left with a traumatic brain injury, a spinal cord injury, severe burns, or an amputation after an accident in New York City, you already know that. The question in front of you right now is not whether your life has changed. It is whether someone is going to be held responsible for it.

You have a deadline. In most catastrophic injury cases in New York, you have three years from the date of the accident to file a lawsuit under CPLR 214. If a government entity is involved, that window drops to 90 days to file a notice of claim. Miss it and you may lose your right to recover anything, no matter how serious your injuries are.

Our catastrophic injury lawyers are here to help you understand what happened, who is responsible, and what your case may be worth. You do not have to figure this out alone.

Can I Sue Someone for a Catastrophic Injury in New York City?

Yes. If someone else's negligence caused your injury, you can sue. Drivers, property owners, construction companies, product manufacturers, employers, government agencies. New York law does not cap what you can recover in most personal injury cases, and for catastrophic injuries, verdicts and settlements routinely reach into the millions because the lifetime costs are real.

The legal standard is negligence. Someone owed you a duty of care, they breached it, and you were hurt as a result. With catastrophic injuries, proving the breach is often not the hardest part.

The harder fight is over how much your future is worth. Insurance companies push hard to make that number as small as possible. They have experts whose entire job is to make your future care sound cheaper than it is. Our catastrophic injury attorneys are built for exactly that fight.

What Injuries Actually Qualify as Catastrophic Under New York Law?

There is no single statute that defines it, but courts and insurance companies use the term to describe injuries that permanently alter your ability to function, require ongoing medical care, or prevent you from returning to the work you did before.

Traumatic brain injuries are among the most common. A serious TBI can affect memory, speech, personality, and the ability to hold a job or live independently. The damage is not always visible on a scan, which is exactly why defense teams challenge these cases so aggressively.

Spinal cord injuries are another. A fracture or severing of the spinal cord can mean paraplegia or quadriplegia. Severe burns affecting large portions of the body require years of surgeries and skin grafts. Amputations, crush injuries, and injuries resulting in blindness or deafness all qualify too.

The label does not matter. The permanence does. If this injury is going to cost you significantly for the rest of your life, it belongs in this category.

How Long Do I Have to File a Catastrophic Injury Lawsuit in New York City?

Three years in most cases. That is the general personal injury statute of limitations under CPLR 214. It sounds like enough time. It rarely is, because these cases take months to build correctly and waiting too long means losing evidence that cannot be recovered.

Ninety days. That is what you get if a government entity is involved. If your injury happened on the subway, an MTA bus, or anywhere a city agency may be a defendant, you have 90 days from the date of the accident to file a notice of claim. That deadline does not move for any reason, including how badly you are hurt or how overwhelmed your family is right now.

If the injured person is a minor, the clock may be tolled until they turn 18. Mental incapacity caused by the injury itself can also affect the timeline. These are fact-specific questions with enormous consequences. Call our catastrophic injury lawyers before you assume you know where you stand.

What If My Catastrophic Injury Happened on the Subway or an MTA Bus in New York?

Then you are dealing with a government defendant, and the rules are strictly different. The MTA, the City of New York, the NYC Department of Transportation, and the New York City Housing Authority all require a notice of claim within 90 days before you can bring a lawsuit.

Platform gap accidents happen at stations across the system. The gap between the train and the platform at the curved section of the 4, 5, and 6 line at 14th Street-Union Square is wide enough to trap a foot. Stations like Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center and Queensboro Plaza have been the sites of serious falls. Bus accidents on routes through the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, and Jamaica Avenue in Queens put pedestrians, cyclists, and passengers at serious risk every day.

Missing the 90-day notice deadline is usually fatal to the case. Courts have limited authority to allow late filings, and the standard for getting an extension is high. Do not test it.

What If I Was Hurt in a Construction Accident That Left Me Permanently Disabled?

New York Labor Law gives construction workers some of the strongest legal protections in the country, and those protections matter enormously in catastrophic injury cases. Labor Law 240, the Scaffold Law, holds property owners and general contractors strictly liable when a worker falls from a height or is struck by a falling object. Strictly liable means you do not have to prove carelessness. You prove it happened on their site under their watch.

Workers have fallen from scaffolding on sites running along the Hudson Yards development, on high-rise projects through the midtown corridor between 42nd and 57th Streets, and at rapidly expanding construction zones in Long Island City. The injuries from those falls are often permanent. Spinal cord damage. Traumatic brain injury. Lost limbs.

Labor Law 241 covers trenching collapses, machinery accidents, and other site hazards. These claims can be brought against the property owner, the general contractor, or both, regardless of which subcontractor actually employed you. Tell our catastrophic injury attorneys which contractor was running the job. That detail shapes the entire case.

What If I Was Partly at Fault for My Own Catastrophic Injury in New York?

You can still recover. New York follows pure comparative negligence. Your compensation is reduced by your share of the fault, not erased by it. If a jury assigns you 30 percent of the blame and your damages are $3 million, you recover $2.1 million.

Defense teams use this rule strategically. They will look for anything to put responsibility on you. Whether you were wearing a seatbelt. Whether you were in a crosswalk. Whether you had been drinking. Our catastrophic injury lawyers anticipate every one of those arguments and start building against them from day one, not after the defense raises them at trial.

Who Is Eligible to File a Catastrophic Injury Claim in New York City?

If you were catastrophically injured because of someone else's negligence, you can file. If the injured person is a minor, a parent or guardian files on their behalf. If the person was left mentally incapacitated by the injury and cannot manage their own legal affairs, a court-appointed guardian may bring the claim.

If your family member died from catastrophic injuries, the estate can bring a wrongful death claim. New York requires that wrongful death claims be filed within two years of the date of death. A survival action, covering the pain and suffering the person experienced before they died, may be available alongside it. These are two separate claims with two different damage calculations, and both matter.

Types of Catastrophic Injury Cases Our NYC Lawyers Handle

Our catastrophic injury lawyers in New York City represent clients injured across a wide range of accident types. Every case on this list shares the same core fact: the injuries are permanent, the costs are enormous, and the opposition will not make this easy.

• Traumatic brain injury accidents: Cases involving TBIs caused by car crashes, falls, assaults, construction accidents, or blunt trauma where the injury results in lasting cognitive or physical impairment.
• Spinal cord injury accidents: Cases where damage to the cervical, thoracic, or lumbar spine has caused partial or complete paralysis.
• Severe burn injury accidents: Cases involving explosions, fires, chemical exposure, or electrical accidents causing third- or fourth-degree burns over significant portions of the body.
• Amputation and crush injury accidents: Cases where a limb was severed or so severely damaged that amputation was required, including industrial accidents, vehicle crashes, and construction site incidents.
• Pedestrian and bicycle accidents: Cases where a driver struck a pedestrian or cyclist on streets like Atlantic Avenue, Northern Boulevard, or the intersection of Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike, causing severe and permanent injuries.
• Construction fall and site accidents: Cases under New York Labor Law 240 and 241 involving falls from scaffolding, ladders, or elevated surfaces, or injuries from falling objects and trench collapses.
• MTA and public transit accidents: Cases involving subway platform falls, train door injuries, bus crashes, and other accidents on MTA-operated vehicles and infrastructure.
• Defective product accidents: Cases where a dangerously designed or manufactured product, including vehicles, medical devices, or construction equipment, caused catastrophic harm.
• Premises liability accidents: Cases where a property owner's failure to maintain safe conditions, whether a broken floor at a Manhattan office building, an unmarked hazard at a Rego Park shopping center, or a crumbling stairwell in a Bronx apartment building, resulted in catastrophic injury.
• Wrongful death from catastrophic injuries: Cases where the injuries proved fatal, brought by the estate of the deceased under New York's wrongful death statute.

How Our Catastrophic Injury Attorneys in New York City Can Help You Recover

The person or company that hurt you already has a legal team. The MTA has an entire in-house legal department. The construction company carries insurance with claims adjusters who have handled hundreds of cases exactly like yours. The driver who hit you has an insurance company that gets paid to minimize what you walk away with. They do this every single day. They are counting on you being too overwhelmed to push back hard.

Our catastrophic injury attorneys change that equation. We investigate independently, preserve evidence before it disappears, and retain medical and economic experts to document what your injuries will actually cost over your lifetime. Lifetime care for a spinal cord injury can run into the millions. Lost earnings for someone in their 30s or 40s who can no longer work can add millions more on top of that. We do not accept a number that has no relationship to what your future actually looks like.

We handle catastrophic injury cases on a contingency fee basis. No upfront costs. No legal fees unless we recover for you. The only thing you need to do right now is make the call.

Talk to Kelner & Kelner About Your Catastrophic Injury Case in New York City

You were hurt. Someone is responsible. And every day that passes makes the case harder to build. Call Kelner & Kelner today to speak with our catastrophic injury lawyers about what happened and what you may be entitled to recover.