What happens if I missed the 90-day notice of claim deadline in New York?

You are not automatically finished, but you need a court's permission. General Municipal Law § 50-e(5) lets a judge allow a late notice of claim, and the single most important factor is whether the agency already had actual knowledge of the essential facts within 90 days or a reasonable time after — through a police report, an ambulance call report, or its own incident report. The application must be made before the statute of limitations expires, which is usually one year and 90 days. It is discretionary, not guaranteed, so speed matters enormously.

What is a 50-h hearing and do I have to attend?

A 50-h hearing is a sworn examination the government entity can demand after you serve a notice of claim, under General Municipal Law § 50-h. Their lawyer questions you under oath about the accident, your injuries, and your medical treatment, before any lawsuit is filed. Yes, you have to attend if it is properly demanded — you generally cannot start your lawsuit until it is held, and failing to appear can end the case. The transcript follows you for the rest of the litigation, so preparation matters.

Does the 90-day deadline apply to children?

The 90-day notice of claim deadline still applies to a child's claim, and being a minor does not extend it automatically — a late notice still requires a court application, though a judge may weigh the child's age heavily in deciding. The statute of limitations is different: New York's infancy toll under CPLR 208 does extend the one year and 90 day period for a minor, and the Court of Appeals has held that a parent filing a notice of claim does not cut that toll off. Do not rely on this. File the notice on time.

Do I need a notice of claim if a city bus or sanitation truck hit my car?

Yes. Any tort claim against the City or a public authority triggers the notice requirement, including a straightforward car accident with a government vehicle. Your No-Fault benefits are separate and have their own 30-day application deadline, so a car accident with a city truck actually puts three clocks in motion at once: 30 days for No-Fault, 90 days for the notice of claim, and one year and 90 days for the lawsuit.

Can I file a notice of claim myself without a lawyer?

You can. The City's eClaim system is open to the public and the form is free. The risks are picking the wrong entity, describing the location too vaguely to be legally sufficient, understating your injuries, or triggering a 50-h hearing you are unprepared for. Those mistakes are much harder to fix after 90 days than before, and the notice can generally only be amended freely inside that window.

New York Notice of Claim: You Have 90 Days to Sue the City, MTA, or NYCHA

Q: What is a New York notice of claim?

A New York notice of claim is a sworn written document you serve on a government entity telling it that you were injured and intend to sue. General Municipal Law § 50-e requires it before almost any tort lawsuit against a public corporation, and it generally must be served within 90 days after the claim arises. It is not the lawsuit itself. It is the gate you have to walk through before a lawsuit is even allowed, and courts treat it as a condition precedent, meaning no notice, no case.

Q: How long do I have to sue the City of New York or the MTA?

Two separate clocks run at once. The notice of claim is due within 90 days of the incident. The lawsuit itself must be started within one year and 90 days of the incident for the City under General Municipal Law § 50-i, for New York City Transit under Public Authorities Law § 1212, for the MTA under Public Authorities Law § 1276, and for NYCHA under Public Housing Law § 157. That is far shorter than the three years you would have against a private driver.

Q: Where do I serve a notice of claim in New York City?

It depends entirely on which entity hurt you. Claims against the City of New York and its charter agencies go to the Comptroller's Office, which accepts electronic filing through its eClaim system, personal delivery, or registered or certified mail. Claims against New York City Transit, the MTA, NYC Health + Hospitals, and NYCHA must be served on those entities directly, not on the Comptroller. Serving the wrong entity is treated the same as serving nothing at all.

New York Notice of Claim: You Have 90 Days to Sue the City

The 90-Day Clock · Brooklyn, NY

If the thing that hurt you belonged to the government — a bus, a stairwell, a sidewalk, a hospital — a clock started the same day, and almost nobody tells you about it until it has already run out.

By Koenig Pierre, Personal Injury Attorney Updated August 7, 2026 12 min read

The short answer

A New York notice of claim is a sworn document you have to serve on a government agency before you're allowed to sue it, and you generally get 90 days from the day you were hurt. It applies to the City, the MTA and New York City Transit, NYCHA, public hospitals, and public schools. Miss it and a strong case can be over before it starts. Then a second, separate clock gives you one year and 90 days to actually file the lawsuit. And here's the part that ends the most cases: serving the right paper on the wrong agency counts as serving nothing at all.

Somebody comes to see me eight months after a city bus took the turn too wide on Nostrand Avenue. Or after their mother broke her hip on a NYCHA stairwell in Brownsville with a light that had been out since Christmas. Good facts. Real injuries. Witnesses who'd testify.

And the first thing I have to ask isn't about the accident. It's a date.

Because if the government hurt you, New York does not give you three years the way it does when a private driver hits you. It gives you 90 days to raise your hand — and if nobody raised it, the rest of the case may not matter. That is the single most brutal rule in New York injury law, and it exists for one reason: the City gets an early warning that a regular defendant doesn't.

What a notice of claim actually is

It's a short sworn document. Not a lawsuit. It tells the agency: this happened to me, here's when and where, here's how I was hurt, and I intend to seek compensation.

General Municipal Law § 50-e requires it in any tort case against a public corporation, and it has to be served within 90 days after the claim arises. Courts call it a condition precedent, which is a fancy way of saying it's a gate. You don't get to argue about the broken step until you've walked through it.

The stated purpose is fairness to the government: let them go look at the stairwell while the light is still out, before it's fixed and the witnesses have moved to Georgia. I understand the logic. I've also watched it swallow cases where a person was in a hospital bed for the entire 90 days, and I'd be lying if I said that sat easy.

Three years to sue the driver who hit you. Ninety days to sue the bus that did. Same injury, same street, same week — and most people never learn the difference until it's too late to matter.

The clock, day by day

There isn't one deadline here. There are several, running at the same time, and they interlock. Here's the whole sequence in a typical City or transit case.

The Sequence · Typical City, MTA, or NYCHA Claim From the day it happened to the day you must file suit

Day 0

It happens

The clock starts now, not when you get out of the hospital and not when you realize how bad it is. Get the incident report number, get photographs, and get the names of anyone who saw it.

Day 30

No-Fault deadline, if a vehicle was involved

A separate clock entirely. If a city truck or a bus was involved, the No-Fault application is due within 30 days or the insurer can refuse your medical bills. This one catches people who are focused on the 90.

Day 90

Notice of claim must be served

Sworn, in writing, on the correct entity. This is the hard one. After this date, getting in requires a judge's permission and it is not guaranteed.

+30 Days

Their window to demand a hearing

The agency has 30 days from service to demand a 50-h examination, and the same 30 days generally has to pass before you're permitted to start suit.

Months 4–8

The 50-h hearing

You testify under oath before any lawsuit exists. Their lawyer asks the questions. You generally can't file until it's been held, and skipping it can end the case.

1 Yr + 90 Days

Lawsuit must be filed

The outside limit for the City, New York City Transit, the MTA, and NYCHA. Roughly fifteen months from the day you got hurt — less than half of what you'd have against a private driver.

Every one of these runs from the date of the incident, not from the date you hired a lawyer. Nothing about calling an attorney pauses anything.

From my desk

A City Sanitation truck backed into a client's car. Liability wasn't complicated — the truck was in reverse, my client wasn't moving. Because Sanitation is a City agency, the notice of claim went to the Comptroller's office inside the 90 days, and my client sat for a 50-h hearing before any lawsuit existed.

Adjuster's first offer $15,000

Settled for $100,000

Nothing about the accident changed between those two numbers. What changed was that the file had a timely notice of claim, a client who walked into the 50-h prepared instead of ambushed, and a documented course of treatment behind the injury. That's the whole point of this article. Miss the 90 days and there is no first offer to negotiate up from.

Case details generalized to protect client confidentiality. Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is decided on its own facts.

Which agency, and where to serve it

This is where cases actually die. "The government" isn't one defendant. A subway platform, a city sidewalk, a public hospital, and a NYCHA lobby are four different entities with four different intakes, and the paperwork has to land on the right desk.

Who hurt you	Notice due	Where it goes / what governs
City of New York Sidewalks, parks, sanitation trucks, NYPD, FDNY, potholes	90 days	The Comptroller's Office — by eClaim, personal delivery, or registered or certified mail. Suit within 1 yr 90 days.
New York City Transit Subways and most city buses	90 days	Served on the Authority directly, not the Comptroller. Public Authorities Law § 1212. Suit within 1 yr 90 days.
MTA and its other subsidiaries MTA Bus Company, LIRR, Metro-North, bridges and tunnels	90 days	Public Authorities Law § 1276. Suit within 1 yr 90 days. The correct subsidiary matters enormously — see below.
NYCHA Stairwells, elevators, lobbies, grounds, mold, lead	90 days	Served on the Authority. Public Housing Law § 157 sets both the notice requirement and a 1 yr 90 day suit deadline.
NYC Health + Hospitals Kings County, Woodhull, Coney Island, Bellevue, Jacobi	90 days	Served on H+H directly — it is a public benefit corporation, not a City charter agency, and does not go to Corporation Counsel.
Public school district School buses, playgrounds, school premises	3 months	Education Law § 3813 — three calendar months, which is a different measurement than 90 days.
State of New York State roads, SUNY hospitals, state facilities	90 days	Court of Claims — a separate court with its own rules. Not a notice of claim under § 50-e at all.

Notice the school district row. Everyone repeats "90 days" like it's universal. Education Law § 3813 says three months, which runs by the calendar and is usually a few days longer — but the point isn't the extra days. The point is that if you assumed the wrong statute, you probably also served the wrong party and said the wrong things in the notice.

The wrong-agency trap

Here's the scenario I hate most, because the person did everything right and still lost.

You got hurt on a bus. You filed a notice of claim, on time, at the Comptroller's office downtown, because that's what you read online. Except the Comptroller doesn't accept claims for the Transit Authority — it says so on its own claims page. Ninety-one days later, your timely notice is worth exactly nothing.

Or: the bus was an MTA Bus Company bus, not a New York City Transit bus. Same paint, same routes in some neighborhoods, different legal entity, different intake. Serve the wrong sibling and you've served no one.

Before you file anything

Photograph the bus number and the route number. Write down the station, the building, the address, and the exact stairwell or intersection. That's what tells a lawyer which entity to name — and on a corner like Flatbush Avenue Extension, where bridge traffic, city trucks, and buses all converge, the answer isn't obvious from the accident alone.

What has to be in the notice

The statute is specific. A notice has to be sworn and has to state your name and address, the nature of the claim, the time and place and manner in which it arose, and your injuries so far as then practicable.

That last phrase does a lot of quiet damage. "So far as then practicable" means you're not locked into a dollar figure — but the location is where notices get attacked. "I fell in the lobby" is not enough. "I fell on the fourth step of the B stairwell between the second and third floors, on the crack running from the north wall" is a notice that survives.

Be exact about where. Building, floor, stairwell, direction, distance from a fixed landmark. Take the photo before it's repaired.
Be exact about when. Date and time of day.
Describe the condition, not just the fall. What was broken, missing, wet, dark, or uneven.
Don't undersell the injuries. Include everything you're being treated for, and don't leave out symptoms that started later.

Within the 90 days, a notice can generally be amended freely. After that, amending usually takes a motion. That asymmetry is another reason not to sit on it.

Not sure which agency, or how many days are left? Call me and we'll figure it out today. Call 1-800-946-4616

The 50-h hearing

Once you serve the notice, the agency can demand an examination under General Municipal Law § 50-h. That's a sworn hearing where their attorney questions you about the accident, your injuries, and your medical history — before any lawsuit exists, before discovery, before you've seen a single one of their documents.

It is a deposition that runs one direction. And the transcript follows you through the whole case; every inconsistency later gets read back to you.

You generally cannot start your lawsuit until it's held, and not showing up can be fatal to the claim. This is not a formality to wing. I've written a full walkthrough on how to prepare for your 50-h hearing, and if you have one scheduled, read that before you go.

If you already missed 90 days

Don't stop reading. It's bad, but it is not automatically over.

§ 50-e(5) lets a judge grant permission to serve a late notice of claim. The factor that matters most, by a wide margin, is whether the agency already had actual knowledge of the essential facts within 90 days or a reasonable time after. Not vague awareness that something happened — knowledge of the facts that make up your claim.

Things that can supply it:

A police accident report describing how it happened.
An ambulance call report, or an emergency room record from a City hospital.
The agency's own incident report — the one the bus operator or the building super filled out that day.
Surveillance footage the agency pulled and preserved at the time.

Courts also weigh whether you had a reasonable excuse and, critically, whether the delay has prejudiced the agency's ability to defend itself. And the Appellate Division has been clear that arguing the defect looks the same today isn't a substitute for the investigation they lost.

Two hard limits. The application has to be made before the statute of limitations runs — generally that one year and 90 days. And it is discretionary. A judge may say no. Every week you wait makes the answer more likely to be no.

Children, wrongful death, and hospitals

A child's case

The 90-day notice deadline still applies to a minor. Being a child does not automatically extend it — a late notice still requires the court application, though a judge can weigh the child's age heavily in deciding whether to allow it. The statute of limitations is different: New York's infancy toll under CPLR 208 does extend the one year and 90 days, and our Court of Appeals has held that a parent filing a notice of claim doesn't shut that toll off. Please don't rely on that. File on time.

Wrongful death

Here the 90 days runs from the appointment of the estate's representative rather than from the death itself. That sounds generous, and it isn't — appointing a representative in Surrogate's Court takes time, and families are grieving and not thinking about court paperwork. The practical advice is to start the estate process early, because nothing else can move until it's done. More on how New York wrongful death claims work.

Malpractice at a public hospital

If you were harmed at Kings County, Woodhull, Coney Island Hospital, or any other H+H facility, you're in the notice-of-claim world, not the ordinary medical malpractice timeline people expect. The private-hospital limitations period does not save you here. The 90 days applies, and it applies from when the claim accrued.

Sidewalks and potholes

There's an extra layer on street and sidewalk defects. New York City generally can't be held liable for a roadway or sidewalk defect unless it received prior written notice of that specific condition — a rule people call the Pothole Law. So the question isn't only whether the crack was dangerous, it's whether it was already on the City's map. That's a records fight, and it's why these cases need to start early. Related reading on our premises liability work.

What to do this week

Write down the date it happened. Then count 90 days forward and put it in your phone. Everything else follows from that number.
Photograph the condition now, before it's repaired. Get the light, the crack, the missing handrail, the bus number.
Get the report. Police report, ambulance record, or the incident report the agency made that day.
Keep treating. The medical record is what proves the injury, and a gap in treatment is the first thing they'll use against you.
File the No-Fault application within 30 days if a vehicle was involved. Start with how No-Fault works.
Talk to someone before day 90, not after. Everything on this page gets easier the earlier it happens, and harder every week it doesn't.

Count the days with me — it's free

Tell me what happened and when. I'll tell you which agency you're dealing with, how much time is actually left, and whether you still have a case. If the answer is no, I'll say so plainly.

Call 1-800-946-4616

Free consultation · No fee unless we win · English · Kreyòl · Español

Prefer to book a time? Schedule a free consultation, or read can I sue the MTA after a subway injury and how much of a settlement you actually keep.

Questions I get asked

What is a New York notice of claim?

A sworn written document you serve on a government entity telling it you were hurt and intend to sue. General Municipal Law § 50-e requires it before nearly any injury lawsuit against a public corporation, generally within 90 days of the incident. It isn't the lawsuit — it's the gate you have to get through before a lawsuit is allowed at all. Courts call it a condition precedent, meaning no notice, no case.

How long do I have to sue the City of New York or the MTA?

Two clocks, running together. The notice of claim is due in 90 days. The lawsuit itself has to be started within one year and 90 days of the incident — that's the rule for the City, New York City Transit, the MTA, and NYCHA alike. Compare that to three years against a private driver and you can see why these cases can't wait.

What if I already missed the 90-day deadline?

You'd need a judge's permission to file late. The biggest factor is whether the agency already had actual knowledge of the essential facts within 90 days or shortly after — through a police report, an ambulance record, or its own incident report. The application must be made before the statute of limitations expires, usually one year and 90 days. It's discretionary and it gets harder every week, so this is a same-week phone call, not a next-month one.

Where do I serve a notice of claim in New York City?

It depends on who hurt you. Claims against the City and its charter agencies go to the Comptroller's Office, which takes electronic filing through eClaim, personal delivery, or registered or certified mail. New York City Transit, the MTA, NYC Health + Hospitals, and NYCHA all have to be served directly — the Comptroller doesn't accept claims for them. Serving the wrong entity is legally the same as serving nobody.

What is a 50-h hearing, and do I have to go?

It's a sworn examination the agency can demand after you serve your notice, under GML § 50-h. Their lawyer questions you about the accident, your injuries, and your treatment, before any lawsuit is filed. Yes, you have to attend if it's properly demanded — you usually can't start suit until it's held, and not showing up can end the claim. The transcript is used for the rest of the case, so go in prepared.

Does the 90 days apply to my child's case?

The notice deadline still applies, and being a minor doesn't extend it automatically — a late notice still needs a court application, though a judge can give real weight to the child's age. The statute of limitations is a different story: the infancy toll under CPLR 208 does extend the one year and 90 days, and the Court of Appeals has held a parent's filing of a notice of claim doesn't end that toll. Treat that as a backstop, not a plan.

A city bus hit my car. Do I really need a notice of claim?

Yes. Any tort claim against the City or a public authority triggers it, including an ordinary fender bender with a government vehicle. And your No-Fault benefits are separate with their own 30-day deadline — so a crash with a city truck starts three clocks at once: 30 days for No-Fault, 90 days for the notice, and one year and 90 days for suit.

Can I file the notice of claim myself?

You can — the City's eClaim system is open to the public and the form costs nothing. The risks are naming the wrong entity, describing the location too vaguely to hold up, understating injuries you're still discovering, and walking into a 50-h hearing cold. Those mistakes are far easier to fix inside the 90 days than after, which is the real argument for making a call first.

Written & reviewed by

Koenig Pierre, Brooklyn personal injury attorney

Koenig Pierre, Esq.

Brooklyn Personal Injury Attorney · Hofstra University School of Law · NY Bar, admitted 2011

"All you need is wise counsel."

Koenig Pierre is a lifelong New Yorker who represents people injured across Brooklyn and the five boroughs from his office on Coney Island Avenue. A large share of his practice involves claims against public entities — city vehicles, MTA buses and subways, NYCHA buildings, and public hospitals — where the 90-day notice of claim deadline decides whether a case exists at all. He handles notice of claim filings, 50-h hearings, and late-notice applications personally, and takes calls from people who are already past day 90 because sometimes there is still a way in. He is known for plain talk, hard preparation, and serving clients in English, Haitian Creole, and Spanish.

Notice of claim & 50-h hearings Claims against the City & MTA NYCHA premises cases New York No-Fault Kings County Supreme Court Contingency — no recovery, no fee

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Attorney Advertising. This article is general information about New York law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Deadlines differ by entity and by the specific facts of a case, and the summaries here are simplified — do not calculate your own deadline from this page. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. If you were injured by a government agency, speak with a licensed attorney immediately, because the time to act is measured in days.