After a crash in Queens, the question almost everyone asks first is some version of the same thing: do I actually have a case? People ask it at the emergency room in Jamaica Hospital, on the phone three days later when the neck pain starts, and after an adjuster has offered a number that does not cover a month of missed work.

In New York the answer turns on one rule that most people have never heard of. It is called the serious injury threshold, it lives in Insurance Law § 5102(d), and it decides whether you are allowed to sue the other driver at all. As of May 2026 that rule is shorter than it used to be, and one of the categories people relied on most is gone. This is what the threshold is, what changed, and how it plays out in a real Queens claim.

Why New York makes you clear a threshold before you can sue

New York is a no-fault state for car accidents. That is a trade. Your own insurer pays your medical bills and part of your lost wages quickly, without anyone arguing about who caused the crash. In exchange, Insurance Law § 5104(a) takes away your right to sue the other driver for pain and suffering unless your injuries clear the threshold.

The no-fault side of that trade is capped. Basic economic loss under § 5102(a) is $50,000 per person. It covers medical treatment without a time limit, lost earnings up to $2,000 a month for no more than three years, and up to $25 a day for other expenses such as car service to physical therapy for up to a year. Under the standard no-fault endorsement, the lost earnings piece pays 80 percent of what you were making, and that 80 percent is still subject to the $2,000 monthly cap.

Read that with a Queens wage in mind and the problem is obvious. People who are seriously hurt run past $50,000 in bills, lose far more income than $2,000 a month replaces, or live with pain that no-fault does not pay for at all. Everything above the cap has to come from a lawsuit, and the lawsuit only exists if you clear the threshold.

The categories that count

Section 5102(d) defines serious injury as a personal injury which results in:

• death
• dismemberment
• significant disfigurement
• a 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
• significant limitation of use of a body function or system

Eight categories. You need one, not all eight. Four of them are more or less self-proving: a fracture on an X-ray is a fracture, a scar is a scar. The last three are the ones that get fought over, because words like permanent, consequential and significant are arguments, not facts, and the insurer’s lawyer will argue them.

What changed in May 2026

Part EE of Chapter 58 of the Laws of 2026 was signed on May 26, 2026 and made two changes that matter to anyone hurt in a Queens collision.

The 90/180-day category was removed. Until this year there was a ninth category: a non-permanent injury that kept you from performing substantially all of your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the 180 days after the crash. It was the category for the person whose MRI looked unremarkable but who could not work, lift a child, or climb the stairs at the Sutphin Boulevard station for three months. It is no longer in the statute. If that was going to be your route in, it is closed.

Comparative fault changed for auto cases. CPLR 1411 used to be pure comparative fault across the board: a jury could find you 80 percent responsible and you would still collect 20 percent of your damages. The new subdivision 1411(b) bars recovery where the claimant’s share of fault is greater than the defendant’s, and it applies to actions subject to article 51 of the Insurance Law, which is the no-fault article. Non-auto cases are untouched and remain pure comparative under 1411(a).

Two details about timing are easy to get wrong. The amendments apply to actions commenced on or after May 26, 2026, not to accidents that happened on or after that date. So a 2025 crash that has not been filed yet is governed by the new rule. And the scope of 1411(b) for pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists is unsettled, because those claimants sit awkwardly against an article that was written around insured motor vehicles. If you ride, this is a question to raise with a lawyer rather than assume; our Queens motorcycle accident page goes through how those claims differ.

What this looks like in an actual Queens claim

Take a home health aide who lives off Liberty Avenue and is rear-ended on Jamaica Avenue near 111th Street on a Tuesday morning. She is taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. X-rays are clean. She is diagnosed with cervical and lumbar strain, given a prescription, and discharged the same day.

Her no-fault benefits start once the claim is filed. The emergency visit runs about $6,400. An MRI three weeks later is $2,100. Twenty-four physical therapy sessions add roughly $4,800. That is about $13,300 of her $50,000, and none of it is a problem.

The wages are the problem. She was earning $840 a week gross, and she is out of work fourteen weeks. Her actual lost earnings are about $11,760. No-fault pays 80 percent of her wage, but the $2,000 monthly cap bites first, so across roughly three and a quarter months she receives about $6,460. She is short about $5,300 in wages alone, and she has not been paid a dollar for four months of pain.

Fourteen weeks is 98 days. Under the old law she would have used the 90/180-day category almost automatically. That category no longer exists, so being out of work for 98 days proves nothing by itself. She needs a different door.

She has one. Her MRI shows a herniation at C5-C6. At her orthopedic follow-up the doctor measures cervical rotation at 45 degrees against a normal range of about 80 degrees, and records it. That is a roughly 44 percent loss of motion, measured with an instrument, written into the chart, and repeated at a later visit. That is what significant limitation of use of a body function or system is built from: an objective finding, quantified, and documented over time.

Now add fault. The other driver’s insurer says she stopped short and puts 35 percent on her. On a $100,000 valuation she recovers $65,000, and the new rule does not hurt her, because 35 is not greater than 65. But if the adjuster had made 55 percent stick, she would recover nothing at all. Before this year she would still have taken home $45,000. That is the whole weight of the change in one sentence, and it is why arguing fault down now matters more than it used to.

Where these cases go wrong

Threshold cases are rarely lost because the injury was not real. They are lost because of what is or is not in the medical file.

The gap in treatment

Someone goes to physical therapy for five weeks, starts feeling a little better, misses a few appointments, and drifts away for two months before the pain brings them back. Defense counsel will call that gap proof that the injury resolved. It can usually be explained, but it has to be explained by the treating doctor in writing, and the explanation is far weaker two years later than it would have been at the time.

The emergency room visit with no follow-up

Queens has four designated trauma centers, all Level I: Elmhurst Hospital Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Queens, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, and Cohen Children’s Medical Center. They are very good at deciding whether you are about to die. They are not set up to document a soft-tissue injury for litigation eighteen months later. A discharge note that says “neck pain, ambulatory, stable” is not evidence of a serious injury. The follow-up with an orthopedist or a neurologist is what creates the record.

No objective testing anywhere in the chart

“Patient reports ongoing pain” is a report of a symptom. The remaining 5102(d) categories all need something measured: imaging, range-of-motion figures taken with a goniometer or inclinometer, a nerve conduction study. With the 90/180 category gone, a file full of subjective complaints and no measurements has nothing left to stand on.

Still planning around the old rule

Plenty of advice online, including pages written by law firms, still lists the 90/180-day category as a live option. Anyone building a claim around “I was out of work for three months” is building it on a category the legislature deleted. If a lawsuit has not been commenced yet, the new rule governs, no matter when the crash happened.

Giving a recorded statement too early

Adjusters call in the first few days, when you are sore but functioning and the MRI has not been done. “I’m okay, just a little stiff” is a sentence that gets read aloud years later. You are required to cooperate with your own no-fault insurer. You are not required to give the other driver’s insurer a recorded statement at all.

The first two weeks, practically

Whatever else happens, three clocks start on the day of the crash, and none of them care whether you have decided to make a claim.

Notice of your no-fault claim has to reach the insurer within 30 days. Medical bills are due within 45 days of treatment. Lost-earnings proof is due within 90 days. Miss those and your own benefits can be denied on paper alone, entirely separate from the threshold question. The lawsuit itself has a three-year limit under CPLR 214(5), which sounds generous until you need a year of treatment records to prove anything, and it is far shorter if a city or transit agency is involved.

Get the follow-up appointment before you leave the hospital, not after the pain gets worse. Ask for range of motion to be measured and written down, not just described. Keep the discharge paperwork, the pharmacy receipts, and a note of every day you missed work. If the crash happened in Richmond Hill, Jamaica, Ozone Park or anywhere else in the borough and it ends up in court, it will be filed at Queens County Supreme Court at 88-11 Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica, a few minutes from our office.

Common questions

Does a herniated disc automatically count as a serious injury?
No. Herniations show up on MRIs of people with no symptoms at all, and defense experts will say yours predated the crash. What carries a claim is the herniation plus measured loss of function plus a treating doctor connecting the two to the collision.

What if my only injury is a broken bone?
A fracture is its own category in § 5102(d). You do not need to prove permanence or significance on top of it. The fracture has to be documented on imaging, which in practice it always is.

I was partly at fault. Can I still bring a claim?
Yes, as long as your share is not greater than the other driver’s. Under CPLR 1411(b) a claimant found more than 50 percent responsible in an auto case recovers nothing, and anything at or below that reduces the award proportionally. Cases outside no-fault, such as a fall on a poorly maintained property, are still pure comparative, where even a mostly at-fault claimant recovers something.

My accident was in 2025 and I have not filed. Which rule applies?
The new one. The 2026 amendments apply to actions commenced on or after May 26, 2026, so the date the lawsuit is filed controls, not the date of the crash. If you have been sitting on a claim from last year, that is worth a conversation now rather than later.

Does the threshold apply to a slip and fall or a dog bite?
No. The serious injury threshold only exists because of the no-fault bargain, so it only applies to claims arising out of the use or operation of a motor vehicle. A fall on a broken sidewalk or a dog bite has no threshold to clear.

If you are not sure which side of the line you are on

Most people cannot tell from their own symptoms whether they clear the threshold. What decides it is whether the right measurements are in the file, and whether someone is reading that file the way a defense lawyer will. That is worth doing early, while the record can still be built rather than reconstructed.

Ribowsky Law is a Queens car accident and injury lawyer with an office at 109-12 Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill, two blocks from the J train at 111th Street. We handle car accident claims across the borough, and if the crash happened near Jamaica Center, our Jamaica office page has directions and local detail. A consultation costs nothing, and if we do not recover for you, there is no fee.

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This article is general information about New York law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case turns on its own facts and on medical records that only a lawyer reviewing your file can assess. Laws change; this was accurate as of September 2026.