What Can You Sue For in a Car Accident?

In New York you can sue for economic losses the no-fault system does not cover, including lost earnings beyond the statutory limits and future medical care, and for non-economic losses including pain, suffering, disability, and loss of enjoyment of life. Non-economic damages are available only if your injury meets the serious injury threshold, and that threshold was narrowed by legislation effective in May 2026.

Kelner & Kelner has represented seriously injured New Yorkers and their families for decades, and our New York car accident attorneys handle collision cases across the five boroughs and the surrounding counties. Robert S. Kelner and the trial lawyers who work with him build the damages case from the first medical record forward, because what a case is worth is a function of what can be proven. This article expands on our New York car accident practice.

What Can You Sue For in a Car Accident in New York?

Damages fall into two families. Economic damages are the measurable financial losses: treatment, wages, care, and out-of-pocket costs. Non-economic damages are the human losses: pain, limitation, disfigurement, and the parts of life the injury took away.

New York does not generally cap either category, with one exception added in 2026 for certain plaintiffs described below. What limits recovery in practice is not a statutory ceiling but three other things: whether the injury clears the serious injury threshold, how fault is allocated, and how well the losses are documented.

Why New York Splits Your Losses Into Two Buckets

Because of the no-fault system. Your own insurer pays basic economic loss regardless of fault, up to fifty thousand dollars per person for treatment and related expenses, plus eighty percent of lost earnings subject to a monthly cap. Those items are generally not part of the lawsuit, because they are already being paid.

What you sue the at-fault driver for is everything no-fault does not reach. That includes economic losses exceeding the no-fault limits, which is common in any case involving surgery, extended treatment, or time out of work, and it includes the entirety of the non-economic claim, because no-fault pays nothing at all for pain and suffering.

This is why people are surprised by what the lawsuit is actually about. The medical bills are usually being handled elsewhere. The lawsuit is about the losses no system pays for unless someone proves the other driver caused them.

What Economic Damages Can You Recover?

Every measurable financial consequence of the injury, past and future, that exceeds what no-fault covers.

• Medical expenses beyond the no-fault limits: surgery, hospitalization, imaging, specialists, and injections once basic economic loss is exhausted.
• Future medical care: additional surgery, ongoing pain management, physical therapy, and revision procedures, projected over a lifetime where the injury is permanent.
• Assistive and adaptive costs: prosthetics, braces, mobility equipment, home modifications, and vehicle modifications.
• Attendant and home care: nursing, aide services, and household help a person can no longer perform.
• Lost earnings: wages beyond what no-fault paid, including overtime, bonuses, and the value of lost benefits.
• Lost earning capacity: the difference between what a person would have earned over a working lifetime and what they can now earn, which is frequently the largest single item in a permanent injury case.
• Out-of-pocket expenses: co-pays, prescriptions, medical travel, and equipment.
• Household services: the replacement value of childcare, cleaning, cooking, driving, and maintenance the injured person used to do.

Future economic loss requires proof rather than assertion. It is established through treating physicians, a life care plan where the injury is permanent, vocational analysis of what work remains possible, and economic testimony reducing future losses to present value.

What Non-Economic Damages Can You Recover?

The losses that have no invoice. New York recognizes them as compensable, and in a serious case they are typically the larger part of the claim.

• Past and future pain and suffering: the physical pain from the injury, the treatment, and the recovery.
• Disability and limitation: the loss of physical function, whether permanent or for a defined period.
• Loss of enjoyment of life: the activities, work, hobbies, and relationships the injury has taken.
• Disfigurement and scarring: including surgical scars.
• Emotional and psychological harm: anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic symptoms arising from the crash and the injury.
• Loss of consortium: brought by a spouse, described below.

These are proven with people rather than paper: the injured person's own account, testimony from family and coworkers about what changed, photographs and video from before and after, and treating providers explaining the permanence and the limitation in medical terms.

Can You Sue for Pain and Suffering After a Car Accident?

Only if your injury meets New York's serious injury threshold in Insurance Law Section 5102(d). This is the gate that decides whether a non-economic claim exists at all, and it changed in 2026.

Legislation effective in May 2026 eliminated the 90/180 category, which had allowed a person with a medically determined non-permanent injury that prevented substantially all usual daily activities for ninety of the first one hundred eighty days to recover. The remaining categories include 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, and significant limitation of use of a body function or system.

The practical consequence is that the threshold now turns on objective and quantified proof: imaging showing structural injury, measured range of motion deficits, and physician findings of permanence, developed while treatment is active. A description of a difficult six months no longer suffices on its own. Because the law is recent, its application to a specific accident and filing date should be confirmed rather than assumed.

There is also a new cap in narrow circumstances. Insurance Law Section 5104 now limits non-economic damages to one hundred thousand dollars for plaintiffs who were operating uninsured, driving while impaired, or committing a felony, where there is a conviction.

Can Your Spouse or Family Sue?

A spouse can bring a derivative claim for loss of consortium, covering the loss of services, society, companionship, and the marital relationship caused by the injury. It is a separate claim that belongs to the spouse rather than to the injured person.

New York does not generally recognize a loss of consortium claim by a child for a parent's injury or by a parent for an adult child's injury. Family members who witnessed a crash may in narrow circumstances have their own claim for emotional harm, but the requirements are strict and fact-specific.

What Can a Family Sue For After a Fatal Crash?

Two claims, brought together by the estate. The wrongful death claim compensates the family for their pecuniary loss. The survival claim compensates the decedent's estate for what the decedent endured before death.

Wrongful death damages in New York remain limited to pecuniary injury, meaning the economic support and services the family lost, plus funeral and medical expenses. Grief and the loss of the relationship itself are not compensable under the current statute. The Grieving Families Act, which would have permitted recovery for emotional loss and expanded the class of eligible recipients, was vetoed again in December 2025 and is not law.

The survival claim covers the decedent's conscious pain and suffering between the injury and death, which requires proof of consciousness, along with medical expenses incurred before death. Families are frequently surprised by the pecuniary limitation, and it is something worth understanding at the outset rather than at the end.

Can You Sue for Punitive Damages?

Rarely. Punitive damages in New York require conduct showing a high degree of moral culpability or a conscious and reckless disregard for the rights and safety of others. Ordinary negligence, including most careless driving, does not qualify.

Where they are sought, it is usually in cases involving severe intoxication, extreme speed combined with other reckless conduct, street racing, or a driver fleeing the scene. Even then the standard is demanding and courts scrutinize these claims closely.

There is also a practical limitation. New York public policy generally prohibits insurance coverage for punitive damages, which means an award has to come from the defendant personally rather than from a policy. That frequently makes a punitive claim less valuable in reality than it appears on paper.

Can You Sue for Vehicle Damage and Related Costs?

Yes, and it is a separate claim from the injury claim with its own three-year period. The usual measure is the reasonable cost of repair, or the fair market value of the vehicle where it is a total loss.

Related recoverable costs generally include towing and storage, a rental or loss of use during a reasonable repair period, and the personal property damaged inside the vehicle. New York's treatment of diminished value, meaning the reduced worth of a repaired vehicle, is limited and depends on the policy and the claim, so ask before signing anything.

One caution repeated because it costs people the most: settle the vehicle claim on a property damage release only. A general release ending all claims arising from the accident will extinguish the injury claim along with it.

What Reduces What You Actually Recover?

The verdict figure is not the number that reaches you. Four mechanisms sit between them, and understanding them explains why two identical injuries can produce very different outcomes.

• Comparative fault: your share of responsibility reduces the award proportionally under CPLR 1411, and under the 2026 amendment a plaintiff more than fifty percent at fault in a motor vehicle case recovers nothing.
• Collateral source reductions: under CPLR 4545, awards for economic loss can be reduced by amounts replaced or indemnified from collateral sources such as health insurance, with an offset for premiums paid.
• Liens and reimbursement claims: health insurers, Medicare, Medicaid, and workers' compensation carriers assert claims against the recovery, and how well those are negotiated directly changes the net.
• Structured judgments and available coverage: New York provides for periodic payment of large future damages awards, and in many cases the practical ceiling is the defendant's insurance limits, which is why identifying every policy matters as much as proving the damages.

How Is the Value of a Car Accident Case Determined?

By the intersection of liability, injury, and coverage. A strong liability case with a modest injury and a serious injury with contested liability are both discounted, and no case is worth more than the money available to pay it.

The factors that move value are permanence, whether surgery was required, objective findings on imaging, the length and consistency of treatment, the effect on the person's work and daily life, the person's age and life expectancy, the clarity of fault, and the available insurance. Prior injuries to the same body part are scrutinized in every case, and are usually addressed rather than fatal.

Nobody can responsibly promise a number. What a firm can do is tell you what the categories are, what proof each one requires, and what is missing from the record right now.

How Do Our New York Car Accident Attorneys Build the Damages Case?

We treat damages as something to be documented rather than described, and most of that work happens while the client is still treating.

• Threshold documentation: coordinating with treating physicians so imaging, measured limitation, and permanence findings are actually in the record.
• Economic proof: earnings history, tax records, employer testimony, and vocational analysis of what work remains possible.
• Future care planning: a life care plan where the injury is permanent, with present value calculation.
• The human record: testimony from family, coworkers, and friends about what the person could do before and cannot do now.
• Coverage investigation: the at-fault policy, commercial and umbrella layers, and your own uninsured and underinsured coverage.
• No-fault management: keeping benefits in place so treatment continues, since interrupted treatment damages the threshold case.
• Lien negotiation: reducing what health insurers and government programs take from the recovery.
• Trial preparation: because what a carrier offers depends on whether it believes the damages case will be presented to a jury.

Why Choose Kelner & Kelner for Your New York Car Accident Case?

Kelner & Kelner is a New York City trial firm that has handled catastrophic injury and wrongful death litigation for generations of families, in the Supreme Court in the five boroughs and the surrounding counties, in the federal courts, and on appeal.

Our attorneys have written and lectured on New York trial practice for the state and city bar associations, and appear regularly in the courts where motor vehicle cases are decided. Where a collision causes a permanent injury, the case overlaps with our New York catastrophic injury practice. Cases are handled on a contingency fee, which means no legal fee unless there is a recovery. Consultations are free and confidential.

Talk to a New York Car Accident Attorney

What a case is worth depends on what gets proven, and most of that proof is created in the months right after the crash, not in the year the case resolves. If a New York collision injured you or someone in your family, let our car accident attorneys review what happened and tell you honestly what we see.