How the Best Car Accident Lawyer in New York Can Save Your Case

New York’s Best Car Accident Lawyers at 1-800-HURT-911®

Looking for the best car accident lawyer near me? You came to the right place whether you’re in The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau, or Suffolk on Long Island, Westchester, or anywhere in NYS.

Just call the 1-800-HURT-911® Personal Injury Dream Team™ right now 7 days/nights for a free consultation with no obligation at 1-800-HURT-911 >> 1-800-487-8911

You will get personal service and aggressive representation with the know-how to get the most amount of money for you.

We can even get money for you when other car accident lawyers tell you that you may not have a case because you have a soft tissue injury or a pre-existing injury. See below what we did for our client Nyda with a pre-existing soft tissue injury when another car accident lawyer in New York didn’t take her case.

Video Testimonial by Nyda

When we settled Nyda’s car accident case, she bought her dream apartment with views of the Hudson River

If you need a car accident lawyer in NYC, Long Island, Westchester, or anywhere in NYS, call the 1-800-HURT-911® Personal Injury Dream Team™ right now 7 days/nights for a free consultation with no obligation at 1-800-HURT-911 >> 1-800-487-8911

How Much Does it Cost to Hire the Best Car Accident Lawyer in New York?

Car accident lawyers in New York all charge 1/3 of what they collect for you. At 1-800-HURT-911®, the best car accident lawyers in New York also charge 1/3 of what we collect for you, but we will advance all case expenses for you, and you will NEVER be charged for legal fees or expenses if we don’t get money for you. See our No Win — No Fees — No Expenses — GUARANTEE! ™ and what we don’t charge you for that other New York car accident lawyers charge.

Who Pays My Medical Bills and Lost Wages In a Car Accident?

New York State law says No-Fault must pay your medical bills in almost all car accidents. Your health insurance or medical insurance policy cannot pay your medical bills for treatment of injuries from a car accident until your No-Fault coverage has been denied.

If you were working at the time of your car accident, then your medical bills must be paid by Worker’s Compensation rather than No-Fault. Note: If you were working at the time of your car accident, you will have both a Worker’s Compensation case and a personal injury case.

What is the New York no-fault law?  Think of No-Fault as health insurance and disability insurance when you are hurt in a car accident.

No-Fault pays for:

• Hospital bills
• Medical bills including medical doctors, chiropractors, dentists, plastic surgery
• Radiology including  X-Rays and MRI
• Physical Therapy
• Drugs
• Transportation to doctors
• Household help
• Lost wages/income

No-Fault has nothing to do with who is at fault for the accident or whether you are entitled to money for pain and suffering.

When Does My No-Fault Application Have to Be Filed?

You only have 30 days to file a No-Fault application in New York, and it’s better for your case to let us fill it out for you so you don’t fill in or leave out something that will hurt you. Medical bills must be submitted within 45 days.

You should never fill out and file a No-Fault application yourself. Always call a car accident lawyer before you file a No-Fault application. If your car accident lawyer doesn’t want to file your No-Fault application, call us.

We will do all of the No-Fault work for you at no charge!  We will also get your lost wage disability payments for you at no charge!

What Will Happen if I File My No-Fault Application Myself?

Three bad things can happen if you file your No-Fault application yourself.

1. You may enter too much information about how your accident happened, which can cause problems with your case.
2. You may enter too little information about your injuries. If you leave out any injury, you can later be denied No-Fault insurance coverage to pay some medical bills. We enter every possible injury.
3. You may enter too much personal information. We don’t want the No-Fault insurance company to know everything they ask about you. For instance, your phone number.

Do you have to fill out everything on your No-Fault application? No. But you need to fill out a lot more for the description of your injuries.

Again, never fill out a No-Fault application yourself. Always have a New York car accident lawyer fill out your No-Fault application. If your car accident lawyer doesn’t want to fill out your No-Fault application, call us!

Can I Get Money Before My Car Accident Case Is Settled?

If you need more money before your car accident case is settled, we can arrange a lawsuit cash advance “loan” for you so you can get money quickly.

Can I Get More Money For My Injuries Than the Other Car’s Insurance?

Yes. The driver and owner of the car that caused your accident and injury may not have enough insurance to pay you for the pain and suffering from your injury. When this happens, underinsured coverage can pay you more money!

If you don’t own a car but live with a family member or relative who owns a car with underinsured coverage, you can get more money, and your family member’s insurance premium cannot be increased.

You may be able to file an underinsured claim that can give you even more money. But you have only 90 days or a reasonable amount of time to file an underinsured claim so please call us immediately for a free consultation.

If you were injured in a car accident and live with a relative who owns a car, you can get more money by filing an underinsured claim with your relative’s insurance company. Your relative’s insurance company can NOT increase your relative’s insurance policy premium if you file a claim!

We can also conduct an asset search of the defendant’s assets to see if there is more money to get.

It may take time to properly investigate your claim, so don’t wait!

What if the Car That Caused the Accident Has No Insurance?

If the car that caused your car accident had no insurance, you can still get money for pain and suffering by filing an uninsured claim.

You have only 90 days or a reasonable amount of time to file an uninsured claim so please call us immediately for a free consultation 1-800-HURT-911 — 1-800-487-8911

What if the Car That Caused the Accident Was Stolen?

If the car that caused your car accident was stolen, you can still get money for pain and suffering by filing an uninsured claim.

You have only 90 days or a reasonable amount of time to file an uninsured claim, so please call us immediately for a free consultation 1-800-HURT-911 — 1-800-487-8911

What if I Was Injured in a Hit and Run Accident?

If you were injured in a hit and run accident when the car that caused your car accident left the scene, you can still get money for pain and suffering by filing an uninsured claim.

If you don’t own a car but live with a family member or relative who owns a car with uninsured coverage, you can get more money, and your family member’s insurance premium cannot be increased.

If you don’t own a car and do not live with a family member or relative who owns a car, you can file a claim with MVAIC, a New York State insurance fund for this purpose.

How to Get Paid 9% Interest on Your Personal Injury Settlement

In New York State, you may be able to obtain 9% interest on your award if we win Summary Judgment!

Summary Judgment is where the court rules early in the case that the other driver was 100% at fault. We can most easily win Summary Judgment in the following types of car accidents if your car was:

• hit in the rear
• hit by a car making a left turn
• hit by a car that ran a red light
• hit by a car that ran a stop sign
• hit by a drunk driver
• hit by a driver on drugs
• hit by a distracted driver; and other reasons

If we win Summary Judgment, that means we got a court judgment declaring the car was 100% at fault and the insurance company is liable to pay you 9% interest on your award. Interest begins to run from the date when the court awards Summary Judgment.

Many car accident lawyers in New York don’t bother to file Summary Judgment motions because it’s too much work. We think it’s well worth the time! When you are awarded 9% interest, the insurance companies want to settle quickly and pay more.

Punitive Damages

We sued for $500 Million including punitive damages when our client’s car (below) was broadsided by an SUV that ran a stop sign while drag racing.  Our client was seriously injured and airlifted by helicopter to a hospital.

Punitive damages are not covered by the defendant’s car insurance and must be paid from the defendant’s personal income and assets. We’ll do an asset search to find real estate, cars, boats, planes, and other assets owned by the defendant anywhere in the U.S. 

Our client had multiple fractures requiring many surgeries because of the injuries he sustained when he was a passenger in the car in this photo that was hit by a drunk driver.

Proving You Have a Serious Injury in a Car Accident

If another car accident lawyer in New York isn’t sure if he or she wants to take your case because your injury may not be serious, we want to represent you! We know how to prove injuries are serious.

While it’s not obvious to people what a lawyer would consider to be a serious injury, injuries in car accidents are more difficult to prove serious. New York State No-Fault law states that you can not sue for an injury in a car accident unless it is a “legally defined” serious injury!

A “legally defined” serious injury is not an injury that you or your doctor think is serious. Think of it as an injury that is legally accepted by the court as serious. If more judges had accidents, this probably wouldn’t be a problem!

This is known as the New York serious injury threshold. You should know that it is only required to prove that an injury is serious in a car accident. This is not required in motorcycle accidents or any other type of accident.

What many people, including some attorneys, do not know is that once you have a broken bone or another serious injury, you can get money for all your other injuries that are not legally serious.

What constitutes a “legally serious” injury in New York is extremely confusing and difficult to understand even for many car accident lawyers. Many lawyers have had cases with injuries requiring shoulder, wrist, knee, and back surgery dismissed by courts. Those clients had their cases thrown out of court, and they got nothing!

Many court decisions dismissing cases state that the plaintiff failed to prove the injury was serious.  Often, this means the attorney failed to prove that the injury is serious.

While other car accident attorneys often send their clients to defense medical exams alone, we go with you and bring an orthopedic surgeon to your orthopedic exam and a neurologist to your neurology exam to observe the insurance company doctors. Our doctors write reports of their observations which can prevent your case from getting dismissed.

Soft Tissue Injuries

Injuries requiring surgery but without a broken bone, are called soft tissue injuries. These are very serious injuries that are difficult and complicated to prove that they are “legally serious.”

If your car accident attorney and your doctor do not properly document the diagnosis and treatment of your injury, your case will be thrown out of court because of the failure to prove that it is a serious injury, even if you had surgery!

Many car accident lawyers in NYC don’t even want car accident cases when the injured victim doesn’t have a broken bone because of the difficulty of proving a soft tissue injury is a serious injury.

Do you think your knee injury, shoulder injury, back injury, or neck injury is serious? We say YES!

The photo below shows a car accident in which our client’s car rolled over on its side when it was hit by a car that ran a stop sign at an intersection in the Bronx, NYC.  One of our clients had a knee injury and later had arthroscopic surgery. Our other client did not have any surgery and had little treatment.

GEICO offered only $25,000 for our client with surgery and nothing for our other client. GEICO claimed that both clients did not have not serious injuries according to the New York State No-Fault law. We declined and asked GEICO if they would agree to arbitrate the claim. GEICO agreed.

We obtained an arbitration award of the entire $100,000 insurance policy for the client with surgery.  The insurance company refused to arbitrate the case of the other client, so we filed a lawsuit. We obtained a $15,000 settlement for that client during the course of the lawsuit.

We proved our client’s knee injury was a serious injury in this Bronx car accident

What Happened When a Car Accident Attorney in New York Falsely Alleged in a Lawsuit That His Clients’ Soft Tissue Injury Met the New York Serious Injury Threshold

A personal injury attorney in New York, Raphael Weitzman, was censured by the New York State Appellate Division, First Department court after he filed a lawsuit alleging that his client’s injuries met the statutorily defined New York serious injury threshold although he didn’t believe that the injuries met the threshold.

The personal injury attorney could have been disbarred but was censured instead because the court panel said he “expressed remorse and has acknowledged the mistakes that he made in his representation.”

How did that New York personal injury lawyer get into trouble?

According to the New York Law Journal, the personal injury lawyer was retained by a client and her mother who were injured in a car accident. Apparently, Attorney Weitzman told the clients that their injuries from the accident didn’t meet the serious injury threshold. He probably told them to get more medical treatment, but the clients said they would get a new car accident lawyer.

Attorney Weitzman probably didn’t want to lose the case to another lawyer, so he filed a lawsuit on their behalf. In the lawsuit document which is a sworn document he alleged, as lawyers do in every car accident lawsuit, that both clients had serious injuries “as defined by §5102(d) of the Insurance Law of the State of New York”. The problem here was that Weitzman knew it wasn’t true.

It is common for personal injury lawyers in New York to either decline to represent clients when the lawyers don’t believe the injury is serious enough to meet the serious injury threshold or to advise the potential client to get more medical treatment.

However, just getting more medical treatment isn’t the answer. A car accident lawyer must know exactly how a doctor must prove and document that an injury is serious. Unfortunately, proving an injury meets the serious injury threshold is very complicated, and many car accident lawyers do not spend the time to do it properly.

Fractures/Broken Bones – a Guaranteed Serious Injury

Any broken bone, known as a fracture, is defined by the New York no-fault statute as a serious injury. This means when a car accident victim has a broken bone, the car accident attorney only needs to provide a medical record proving that there was a broken bone caused by the car accident.

Any broken bone is a serious injury. A broken nose, finger, toe, or rib is also guaranteed to be recognized by a New York Court as a serious injury.

I have met many personal injury lawyers in New York that did not know that even a broken tooth is a legally defined serious injury that meets the New York No-Fault threshold.

When there is a broken bone, even a broken tooth, you are entitled to get money for all of your other non-serious injuries!

Our client broke 3 ribs in this car accident

In this head-on collision with a car making a left turn, our client reinjured a previous fracture that required surgery. The bone graft moved in the second accident which has been ruled by a New York State Supreme Court to be a serious injury.

Our client was seriously injured with a broken ankle in this car accident

Previous Existing Injury

We represented Nyda whose car was struck (photo below) by a car that ran a red light. She had a previously existing lower back pain and was being treated by an orthopedic surgeon for two years prior to the accident, right up until the time of the accident.

Nyda originally searched Google for a “car accident lawyer near me” and went to another car accident lawyer in The Bronx. But the lawyer wasn’t immediately interested in her case because she had a soft tissue injury. He told her to get more medical treatment, and maybe he would take her case after a few months of medical treatment. He didn’t even know about her previous existing injury.

Nyda then looked ~ We immediately took her case.

After her accident, her soft tissue injury back pain worsened. The year after the accident, she had lower back surgery.

Allstate never made an offer for several years and hired a doctor who argued that her injury was previously existing and had nothing to do with the car accident. At a 4-hour mediation of her case, Allstate offered $425,000, but we finally settled for $750,000, and she bought her dream apartment with views of the Hudson River.

Don’t take chances with a car accident lawyer in New York who doesn’t understand how to properly handle injuries from car accidents or an attorney who just doesn’t make the effort necessary.

Call the 1-800-HURT-911® Personal Injury Dream Team™ right now 7 days/nights for a free consultation with no obligation at 1-800-HURT-911 >> 1-800-487-8911

Car Accident Resources

• How to get a police report in NYC (this page is on our motorcycle accident website but we also do car accidents)
• How to get a police report on Long Island (this page is on our motorcycle accident website but we also do car accidents)
• How to fill out an MV-104 (this page is on our motorcycle accident website but also applies to car accidents)
• Free online traffic accident diagram drawing software – Do NOT make a drawing and submit it to your insurance company.  If you want to use this, only provide it to your lawyer.
• What you should know about getting your ambulance bill paid by No-Fault before you get stuck owing the money when No-Fault denies payment.
• Lost Wage benefits from No-Fault & New York State Disability benefits

Distracted & Impaired Driver Infographic

This infographic shows the facts about driving while distracted by texting, talking on the phone, and impairment from alcohol or drugs.

When You’re Injured in a Car Accident

If you have been in a car accident, please call us now for a free consultation if you have any of these serious injuries:

• Broken bone, broken nose, broken rib, no matter how minor or small
• Pain in your knee
• Pain in shoulder
• Pain in your wrist
• Pain in your neck
• Pain in your back
• Concussion
• You were in the hospital overnight
• You had or may have had any kind of surgery
• We can get the cost of plastic surgery and breast implant leak replacement pre-approved and paid by No-Fault, so you don’t need to pay out of pocket.
• We can get the cost of dental treatment and surgery and TMJ surgery pre-approved and paid by No-Fault, so you don’t need to pay out of pocket.