This year’s New York State budget includes monumental changes in auto injury law. Buried inside the broader budget package are auto-insurance and tort-law changes that immediately matter directly to injured people, trial lawyers, insurance carriers, and anyone trying to understand what a motor vehicle case in New York is going to look like going forward.
For those of us representing injured people in Buffalo and across Western New York, three changes stand out above the rest.
First, is the dramatic change in comparative negligence in auto crash cases. New York amended CPLR 1411 so that comparative negligence now works differently in personal injury actions that are subject to Article 51 of the Insurance Law, namely motor vehicle crash cases. Second, the Legislature removed the “90/180-day” category from the definition of “serious injury” in Insurance Law § 5102(d). Third, Insurance Law § 5104 now includes a new $100,000 cap on non-economic damages in certain cases involving at-fault injured persons operating uninsured vehicles, driving while impaired, or committing a felony.
Those are real changes. They’re not just proposals. And they’re going to matter.
These represent sea-changes to New York law.
“Article 51 Insurance Law cases” are motor vehicle cases for almost all types of vehicles, including pedestrians and bicyclists. The only real exclusion are motorcycle cases.
FIRST: The Comparative-Negligence Change
No longer is New York a pure comparative fault State in Article 51 personal injury cases.
For decades, New York was a pure comparative-negligence jurisdiction. In the typical personal injury case, a plaintiff’s culpable conduct reduced damages, but it did not bar recovery altogether. That remains true generally under CPLR 1411(a), with an exception carved out for motor vehicle cases. The budget added a new subsection (b), and that subsection is a major shift for cases “subject to article fifty-one of the insurance law.”
Under the new CPLR 1411(b), in an action to recover damages for personal injury subject to Article 51, the claimant is barred from recovery if the claimant’s culpable conduct is greater than the culpable conduct of the person against whom recovery is sought or greater than the combined culpable conduct of the persons against whom recovery is sought.
In practical terms, that means New York has moved to a modified-comparative-fault model for no-fault-threshold personal injury cases arising out of motor vehicle accidents. If the plaintiff is more than fifty percent at fault, (that is, 51% or greater), recovery is barred. If the plaintiff is fifty percent or less at fault, recovery is not barred, but damages are reduced accordingly.
That is a very significant change for automobile litigation. It affects case evaluation, pleadings, settlement strategy, mediation posture, jury instructions, and trial risk. It also means that fault allocation becomes even more important in close-call motor vehicle cases than it already was.
This change cannot be overstated. The text of the amendment is tied to actions “subject to article fifty-one of the insurance law.” So, this is not an across-the-board repeal of New York’s historic comparative-fault rule in every tort case. The statutory language is narrower than that.
For Buffalo motor vehicle practitioners, however, narrower does not mean small. Article 51 cases are the heart of everyday auto litigation.
SECOND: The Elimination of The 90/180 Category
The second major change is to Insurance Law § 5102(d), which defines “serious injury.” As most New York personal injury lawyers know, the statute included since its inception a category for a “medically determined injury or impairment of a non-permanent nature which prevented the injured person from performing substantially all of the material acts constituting that person’s usual and customary daily activities for not less than ninety days during the one hundred eighty days immediately following the occurrence.”
That category is now gone. The rule has been eliminated from New York law with a stroke from the Governor’s pen.
As amended, § 5102(d) now lists the serious-injury categories as death; dismemberment; significant disfigurement; 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 90/180 category no longer appears in the statute.
That’s another major change for plaintiff-side motor vehicle practice. The 90/180 category often was an important alternative theory in cases where permanency was debatable, but the client’s life had been substantially disrupted for a significant period immediately after the crash. It was especially relevant in soft-tissue cases, injury-aggravation cases, concussion cases without dramatic imaging findings, and cases where the plaintiff did recover meaningfully over time but still endured a serious, provable period of disability.
Its elimination doesn’t mean those cases vanish. Some will still satisfy the significant-limitation or permanent-consequential-limitation categories, depending on the medical proof. Fracture cases remain fracture cases. But it does mean that a once-recognized route past the threshold no longer is available.
From a practical standpoint, this change likely puts even more pressure on contemporaneous medical documentation, objective testing, causation opinions, and the careful framing of limitation evidence. For plaintiffs’ lawyers, early medical record development becomes even more important. For insurers, expect this amendment to be used aggressively on summary judgment in cases that previously might have survived under 90/180.
THIRD: The New $100,000 Cap in Insurance Law § 5104
The third headline change is found in Insurance Law § 5104(d). The amended statute now provides that, other than in an action for damages resulting in death, recovery for non-economic loss is limited to $100,000 in the case of a serious injury in any action by or on behalf of an injured person who is at fault, is not barred from recovery by CPLR 1411, and was operating an uninsured motor vehicle for which that person was responsible to insure, subject to a lapse exception of less than thirty days; or was operating while impaired and convicted of such; or was operating in the commission of a felony, or immediate flight therefrom, and has been convicted of that felony.
This provision needs to be read carefully.
It is not a general cap on pain and suffering in New York auto cases. It is not a universal cap on uninsured drivers. It is not triggered in every DUI-related crash. And the statute expressly excludes actions for damages resulting in death.
Instead, it applies to a narrower class of injured persons who are themselves at fault, who still clear the new CPLR 1411 bar, and who also fall into one of the specifically-listed categories. Even so, it’s a real cap, and it’s going to have real consequences in settlement valuation and litigation strategy in the subset of cases where it applies.
What Did Not Change
Accuracy matters here, because budget politics can create confusion. The enacted text supports the three tort-law changes discussed above: the new CPLR 1411(b) rule for Article 51 personal injury cases; the removal of the 90/180 category from Insurance Law § 5102(d); and the new limited cap in Insurance Law § 5104(d).
By contrast, some broader proposals discussed publicly during budget negotiations did not make it into the final package in enacted form.
Why This Matters in Buffalo Motor Vehicle Litigation
In Buffalo and throughout Western New York, these changes are going to affect everyday car-crash practice immediately.
Rear-end cases with strong liability still will be strong liability cases. Clear left-turn failure-to-yield cases still will be strong liability cases.
But closer comparative-fault cases now carry more risk for plaintiffs than they did before if they fall under Article 51. A case that might once have survived with a reduced verdict now presents an all-or-nothing exposure if the defense can persuade a jury that the plaintiff was more than fifty percent at fault.
The serious-injury threshold also will become harder in certain cases. Plaintiffs who once relied on 90/180 as a viable category now must fit their proof into the remaining statutory boxes. That shifts the evidentiary burden and may change which cases are economically practical to litigate.
And for the narrow class of cases captured by the new § 5104(d) cap, damages analysis now must start with the statute, not just the injuries.
The Bottom Line
This year’s New York budget made meaningful tort-law changes in the automobile context. The Legislature did not merely tweak procedure. It fundamentally altered the law in New York for the comparative-negligence framework for Article 51 personal injury cases, eliminated the 90/180 serious-injury category, and imposed a new limited cap on non-economic damages for certain at-fault injured persons operating uninsured vehicles, driving while impaired, or committing a felony.
For injured people in Buffalo, that means the legal landscape is less forgiving than it was before. For plaintiffs’ lawyers, it means fault development, medical proof, and early case selection all become even more important. For insurance carriers, it creates new statutory arguments that will certainly be raised early and often.
If you were injured in a car accident in Buffalo or anywhere in Western New York, the details matter now more than ever: how the crash happened, who was at fault, what the medical records show, and whether the injuries fit the threshold categories that remain. Those questions always mattered. After this budget, they matter even more.
