New York City Slip and Fall Accident Lawyer

New York Personal Injury Lawyers / Legal Services / New York City Slip and Fall Accident Lawyer

In a city of more than 8.3 million people and 12,750 miles of sidewalk, slip and fall accidents are not freak occurrences; they are everyday consequences of overcrowded, poorly maintained public property in one of the most heavily trafficked places on earth.

At Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, we have spent more than 50 years representing injured New Yorkers, and slip and falls remain one of the most underestimated sources of serious slip and fall injury we see. A “minor fall” can leave you with a fractured hip, a torn rotator cuff, a herniated disc, or a traumatic brain injury that follows you for the rest of your life. As a slip and fall law firm rooted in the five boroughs, we know how to hold negligent property owners, businesses, and even the City itself accountable when their carelessness costs you your health and your income.

Slips and Falls Happen Everywhere in New York City

The places where New Yorkers get hurt say a lot about how the city actually works. Few people fall in their own living rooms. Most of our clients are injured doing something perfectly ordinary — commuting, shopping, eating out, running errands.

Common locations we see in our slip and fall cases include:

• NYC sidewalks that abutting property owners failed to repair, salt, or shovel — by far the largest category, given how much time New Yorkers spend on foot
• Subway stations and platforms, where wet stairs, broken tile, malfunctioning escalators, and ungranted water leaks injure passengers across the MTA‘s 472 stations
• Apartment buildings and walkups, including unlit stairwells, broken handrails, and lobbies with no wet-floor warning after mopping
• Restaurants, bars, delis, and bodegas, where spills, grease, and overloaded entryways during rain create constant hazards
• Hotels and tourist destinations in and around Times Square, Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, the Financial District, and the Brooklyn Bridge waterfront
• Construction zones, where exposed rebar, unguarded scaffolding, debris, and uneven plywood walkways injure both workers and passersby
• Supermarkets, big-box retailers, and pharmacies with leaking refrigeration, freshly mopped aisles, or fallen merchandise

If you were hurt anywhere in the five boroughs, we can help.

How New York’s Slip and Fall Law Differs from the Rest of the Country

Slip and fall law in New York City is not the same as it is on Long Island, in Westchester, or in neighboring states. A few features of NYC law make a real difference in whether you can recover and how much you can recover.

NYC Administrative Code §7-210: Sidewalk Liability Sits with the Property Owner

In most American cities, the municipality is responsible for the sidewalks. New York City flipped that rule. Under NYC Administrative Code §7-210, the owner of the property abutting a public sidewalk is generally liable for fall injuries caused by the failure to maintain that sidewalk, including the failure to clear snow and ice in a reasonable amount of time. The exception is owner-occupied residential properties of one, two, or three families, where the City may remain on the hook.

For nearly every commercial building, large apartment building, and mixed-use property in the five boroughs, the owner — not the City — is the party your claim is brought against. Most slip and fall attorneys outside NYC do not know this rule, while we file under it every week.

Pure Comparative Negligence (CPLR §1411)

New York is a pure comparative negligence state. Even if a jury finds you partly at fault — say, because you were on your phone or wearing the wrong shoes — you can still recover. Your award is simply reduced by your percentage of fault.

In states with “modified” or “contributory” negligence rules, being even 50% or 51% at fault can wipe out your claim entirely. Not in New York. That distinction has saved millions of dollars in slip and fall cases for our clients.

The Storm-in-Progress Doctrine

Property owners in NYC are generally not required to clear snow or ice while a storm is still actively falling. They get a reasonable period afterward to make conditions safe. Under NYC Administrative Code §16-123, that window is typically four hours after the storm ends, excluding overnight hours.

The interplay between when the storm ended, when your fall happened, and what the owner did in between is often the entire personal injury case. We know how to pull weather data, surveillance footage, and 311 complaint history to prove it.

Notice Requirements for Claims Against the City or MTA

If your fall happened in a Parks Department playground, on NYCHA property, in a subway station, or anywhere else the City or a public authority owns or controls, you generally have 90 days to file a Notice of Claim under General Municipal Law §50-e and only one year and 90 days to file the lawsuit itself. Miss those deadlines, and your slip and fall case is over before it starts.

For private property owners, the standard New York personal injury statute of limitations of three years (CPLR §214) applies. Either way, the clock starts the day you fall.

Who Can Be Held Liable for a NYC Slip and Fall Injury?

Liability in a slip and fall depends on who owned, controlled, or was responsible for maintaining the property where you were injured. Depending on the facts, that could be:

• The building or property owner, or the property management company
• A commercial tenant that controlled the space where you fell
• The City of New York (parks, public buildings, sidewalks abutting one- to three-family owner-occupied homes)
• The MTA, NYCT, or PANYNJ for falls inside transit facilities
• NYCHA for falls in public housing
• A construction contractor or subcontractor working on or adjacent to the property
• A cleaning or maintenance company under contract to keep the premises safe
• A landlord in a residential building who failed to maintain common areas

When multiple parties share blame — a building owner and a snow-removal vendor, for example — we name all of them. That is often the difference between a partial recovery and a full one.

What Your Slip and Fall Attorney Must Be Able to Prove in Your Slip and Fall Case

To win a slip and fall case, your slip and fall attorney must generally establish four things:

1. Duty. The defendant had a legal duty to keep the property reasonably safe.
2. Breach. They breached that duty through action or inaction.
3. Notice. They either knew about the dangerous condition (actual notice) or it had existed long enough that they should have known (constructive notice). This is where most slip and fall cases are won or lost.
4. Causation and damages. The dangerous condition caused your fall, and your fall caused real, documented injuries.

A skilled NYC slip and fall attorney does not just describe what happened. They document it, build it, and put it in front of an adjuster or jury in a way that leaves little room to argue.

What to Do After a Slip and Fall in New York City

What you do in the hours and days after a fall has an outsized impact on your case. If you are physically able:

• Seek medical attention immediately. Adrenaline masks fall injuries, and gaps in treatment are the first thing insurance adjusters attack.
• Report the fall in writing. Ask for an incident report from the store manager, building super, restaurant owner, or MTA station agent. Keep a copy.
• Photograph everything — the hazard, the lighting, your shoes, your major and minor injuries. Conditions get cleaned up within hours.
• Get witness contact info. Memories fade, and people scatter.
• Preserve your shoes and clothing. Do not wash them.
• Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance company before speaking with an experienced slip and fall lawyer.
• Call Jacoby & Meyers. The sooner we are involved, the sooner we can secure surveillance footage before it is overwritten.

Financial Compensation Available in a NYC Slip and Fall Claim

Every case is different, but financial compensation in slip and fall claims in New York typically includes:

• Past and future medical expenses — emergency care, surgery, physical therapy, pain management, future procedures
• Lost wages and lost earning capacity if your fall injuries keep you out of work, temporarily or permanently
• Pain and suffering for the physical and emotional distress
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Out-of-pocket costs, including transportation, home modifications, and household help
• Wrongful death damages if a loved one died as a result of a fall

In cases involving particularly egregious conduct, like a landlord who ignored repeated complaints or a business that hid prior incidents, punitive damages may also be available.

If your devastating accident occurred in a workplace context, you may have overlapping rights under workers’ compensation as well as a third-party premises liability claim. Our team handles both. Many of our slip and fall clients also have claims that intersect with our premises liability practice, car accident practice (parking lot falls), and pedestrian accident practice.

Why Injured New Yorkers Choose the Slip and Fall Lawyers at Jacoby & Meyers

We have been practicing personal injury law in New York City for more than 50 years. Our Managing Partner, Andrew Finkelstein, is regularly called on by The New York Times, amNY, the New York Post, and PIX 11’s New York Living to weigh in on safety issues affecting everyday New Yorkers, including winter slip-and-fall liability. We are not a national firm passing through the city. Our slip and fall attorneys live here, raise families here, ride the same subways, and walk the same sidewalks our clients do.

We work on a pure contingency basis. There are no upfront costs, no hourly bills, and no attorney fees of any kind unless we recover compensation for you. We advance the costs of investigation, expert witnesses, and litigation, and we are paid only if and when you are.

Contact Our New York City Slip and Fall Law Firm for a Free Consultation Today

If you were injured in a slip, trip, or fall anywhere in the five boroughs, the time to act is now. Evidence disappears, witnesses move, and notice deadlines (especially against the City and the MTA) come up fast.

Call us or fill out our online contact form for a free, confidential consultation with a New York slip and fall law firm that has been fighting for injured New Yorkers since before most of our competitors opened their doors. No fee unless we win maximum compensation for you.

Jacoby & Meyers, LLP
39 Broadway Suite 1910,
New York, NY 10006
(212)-445-7000