Glendale, Queens Personal Injury Lawyer

For over 30 years, Michael D. Ribowsky has provided his clients with the results and the integrity they require. Our office is at 109-12 Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill — two neighbourhoods south of Glendale, straight down Woodhaven Boulevard.

Glendale has no subway. It lost its Long Island Rail Road station in 1998, and everything since has moved by bus or by car, which concentrates the neighbourhood’s traffic onto a handful of roads. Myrtle Avenue is the main business strip and carries the Q55 along its length; between the bus stops, the parked cars and the shopfront traffic, it produces more pedestrian claims than anywhere else in Glendale.

Woodhaven Boulevard runs the western edge with the Q52 and Q53 Select Bus Service, wide and fast enough that crossing it on foot is a real risk. Cooper Avenue and Metropolitan Avenue take the through traffic, including everything heading for The Shops at Atlas Park.

Our free case consultation will tell you what your claim is realistically worth. We work on contingency: no fee unless we win.

If your accident happened elsewhere in the borough, our Queens accident lawyers handle claims in every neighbourhood.

If you were hurt in Glendale — on Woodhaven Boulevard, at a Myrtle Avenue crossing, on Cooper or Fresh Pond Road, or inside a building somebody failed to maintain — you can call us today and it costs nothing to ask.

We are a Queens personal injury firm. Our office is on Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill, a few minutes east along the same road, and we take cases from Glendale every week. Get directions from Glendale. We work on contingency, which means you pay nothing unless we win.

Call 718-659-5333. Open 7am to 9pm, Monday to Friday and Sunday. If your injuries make travel difficult, we will come to you.

Woodhaven Boulevard is the reason most people call us

Glendale is a quiet neighborhood with one very loud road running down its eastern edge, and that road produces most of the serious injury work we see here.

When New York City’s transportation department presented its Woodhaven and Cross Bay Boulevard plans to Queens Community Board 5 — Glendale’s own board — it put the case in a single line: Woodhaven Boulevard is a Vision Zero priority corridor with over 3,000 injuries and 22 fatalities in five years.

A later department release counted 129 people killed or seriously injured across those corridors over a five-year window. Injury crashes fell by six percent in the year after Select Bus Service began. Then two pedestrians were killed within weeks of each other at Woodhaven and Jamaica Avenues, and the department went back in with further measures.

That junction sits just off Glendale’s southern corner. If you were hurt anywhere along Woodhaven Boulevard, you were hurt on a road the City has been publicly trying to fix for a decade, and that history is part of your case rather than background color.

Where Glendale accidents happen

Glendale has no subway. Everything moves by bus or by car, which concentrates the whole neighborhood’s traffic onto a handful of roads — the Q52 and Q53 Select Bus Service down Woodhaven Boulevard, the buses along Myrtle Avenue, and the through traffic on Cooper and Metropolitan. That dependence is why so many of the claims here involve a bus, a bus stop, or somebody crossing to reach one.

The city designates its most dangerous streets as Vision Zero priority corridors. In and around Glendale the designated roads are Woodhaven Boulevard, Fresh Pond Road and Cooper Avenue, with Eliot Avenue along the northern edge and Jamaica Avenue just beyond the southern one.

Two priority intersections sit inside the neighborhood: Woodhaven Boulevard at Myrtle Avenue, and 69th Street at Metropolitan Avenue. Two more sit on the boundary — Woodhaven at Jamaica Avenue, and Eliot Avenue at Fresh Pond Road.

In 2025 there were 292 reported crashes within Glendale, in which 151 people were injured. Twenty-five of those injured were on foot and 19 were on a bicycle. Nobody was killed on a Glendale street that year, which is worth saying because it is true and because most firms would not bother to check.

Myrtle Avenue needs a careful word. It is the neighborhood’s commercial spine and it produces a steady stream of claims, but the formal Vision Zero corridor designation on Myrtle Avenue covers the Brooklyn stretch rather than the Queens one. The transportation department has treated the Ridgewood end as a priority corridor in its own project documents — a one-mile stretch there produced 148 injuries and 14 people killed or severely injured over five years, and the department places it inside its Ridgewood-Glendale senior pedestrian focus area. So Myrtle Avenue is genuinely dangerous here. It is simply not on the formal list, and we would rather tell you that than overstate it.

The rest of the local geography does its own damage. Metropolitan Avenue and Cypress Hills Street carry crosstown traffic. The Jackie Robinson Parkway runs through Forest Park along the southern edge with fast merges either end. And Glendale is ringed by cemeteries — the city’s own boundary file gives four of them their own separate neighborhood designations in this community district — which means long stretches of road with no frontage, no footfall and nobody watching.

The claims we handle in Glendale

• Car accidents on Woodhaven Boulevard, Cooper Avenue, Metropolitan Avenue and the Jackie Robinson Parkway approaches.
• Pedestrian knockdowns on Myrtle Avenue and at the Woodhaven crossings, where the road is wide and the crossing distances are long.
• Slip and fall claims in the shops and apartment buildings along Myrtle Avenue and Fresh Pond Road, and on the sidewalks outside them.
• Premises liability, where an owner knew something was dangerous and left it that way.
• Bus and commercial vehicle crashes. Where an MTA bus or a city vehicle is involved, a notice of claim has to be filed within 90 days rather than three years.
• Truck collisions around the Cooper Avenue and Eliot Avenue industrial frontage.
• E-bike and e-scooter collisions, which have risen along Myrtle Avenue as delivery traffic has grown.
• Construction accidents, which in New York carry protections most workers do not know they have — including protections that apply regardless of immigration status or whether you were paid off the books.
• Dog bites, where New York applies its own rule about an owner’s knowledge of the animal rather than a simple one-bite test.

If you are not sure which of these describes your situation, that is normal. It is usually the first thing we work out on the call.

Where you were treated matters, and Glendale is a difficult case

This is the section worth reading twice, because Glendale sits awkwardly between hospitals and the consequences are legal rather than medical.

The nearest hospital is Wyckoff Heights Medical Center on Stockholm Street, just over the Brooklyn line. It is a private not-for-profit, and it is not a state-designated trauma center — a fact worth knowing, because it is sometimes described as one.

The nearest designated Level I trauma center is NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst, about four kilometres away. That is a city hospital. NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull in Brooklyn is also public. Jamaica Hospital Medical Center is a Level I trauma center and is private.

Why that matters: a claim arising from care at a public hospital has to begin with a notice of claim within 90 days, not three years. Somebody badly hurt on Woodhaven Boulevard is quite likely to end up at a public hospital some distance away, and quite unlikely to be told about a 90-day clock while they are in it.

Whichever hospital it was, bring the paperwork to your first appointment. Those records usually decide what a claim is worth.

Sidewalk falls in Glendale are a special case

Since 2003 New York City has put responsibility for most sidewalks on the owner of the building beside them. There is one exception, and in Glendale it comes up constantly: owner-occupied one-, two- and three-family homes used exclusively as residences. For those the City remains responsible — and a claim against the City starts with a notice of claim within 90 days rather than a three-year clock.

Glendale is built largely from exactly that kind of housing. Fall outside a shop on Myrtle Avenue and the owner is answerable and you have the full three years. Fall outside a two-family house on one of the side streets and you may be facing the City on a 90-day clock instead.

Two questions decide it: whether an owner actually lives in the building, and whether any part of it is commercial. A two-family house with a shop underneath is not exempt, because the law requires the property be used purely as a residence. Two doors on the same block can fall on opposite sides of that line.

Where your Glendale case will be heard

Most Queens personal injury cases are filed in the Supreme Court, Queens County, Civil Term, at 88-11 Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica. Some civil matters are heard at the court’s Long Island City building at 25-10 Court Square.

Note that Sutphin Boulevard is the civil courthouse. The building on Queens Boulevard in Kew Gardens that people usually picture is the criminal court, and your injury case will not be there.

What to do after an accident in Glendale

1. Get medical attention the same day, even if you feel fine. A gap between the accident and the first treatment is the first thing an insurer points to.
2. Call 911 and get a police report. Glendale is covered by the 104th Precinct on Catalpa Avenue. If the police do not attend, file a report yourself.
3. Photograph everything before it is moved — the vehicles, the road, the hazard, your injuries, the light, the weather. Put something in the frame for scale.
4. On Woodhaven Boulevard, photograph the crossing itself — the distance, the signal timing, where the bus lane sits. The layout is often part of the story.
5. Take names and numbers from witnesses. They disappear quickly, and Glendale’s quieter blocks have fewer of them to begin with.
6. Do not give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurer. You are not obliged to, and it is rarely used to help you.
7. Watch the deadlines. Three years is the general rule. Ninety days is the rule where the City, the MTA or a public hospital is involved.

Glendale injury claims — common questions

What does it cost to start?

Nothing. We work on contingency, so we take a percentage only if we recover money for you. If we recover nothing, you owe us nothing.

How long do I have to bring a claim?

Generally three years from the date of the accident in New York, and two and a half years for medical malpractice. But if a city agency, the MTA or a public hospital is involved, a notice of claim has to be filed within 90 days. Call early rather than waiting to see how you heal.

I was hurt on Woodhaven Boulevard. Does the road’s record help me?

It can. The City has publicly documented this corridor for years — thousands of injuries, dozens of deaths, and a series of redesigns. That history does not decide your case, but it makes it much harder for a driver to argue that what happened was freakish or unforeseeable.

My address says Ridgewood on some things and Glendale on others.

That is normal and it changes nothing. Glendale has no ZIP code of its own — it shares 11385 with Ridgewood, so postal records cannot tell the two apart. What matters is where the accident happened and who was responsible for it.

I was partly at fault. Is it worth calling?

Yes, and it is worth calling sooner rather than later, because the rule changed in 2026 and it now depends on what kind of accident it was.

In a car accident case, you can still recover if you were up to half at fault, and what you recover is reduced by your share. If you were more than half at fault, you recover nothing for pain and suffering.

In other injury cases — a fall, a construction accident, a dog bite — your share simply reduces what you recover and does not bar the claim.

Either way, the percentage is argued rather than obvious, and it is usually lower than the other side’s insurer first suggests.

The other driver had no insurance. Do I still have a case?

Often, yes. Your own policy may carry uninsured motorist coverage, and where the driver was never identified there is a state fund for exactly that situation. It has its own deadlines, so do not sit on it.

Do I have to come to the office?

No, though you are welcome to — we are on Jamaica Avenue, a few minutes away. We can take the details by phone or on WhatsApp, and if your injuries make travel difficult we will come to you.

In New York you generally have three years from the date of an accident to bring a personal injury claim, and two and a half years for medical malpractice.

But if the MTA, the City or a public hospital is involved, a notice of claim has to be filed within 90 days. In a neighbourhood that runs on buses, that applies far more often than people expect — and it is the deadline nobody hears about until it has already passed.

If you are not sure which one applies to you, call and ask. It costs nothing to find out.