The law that applies to your claim
CPLR §214-a — two years and six months
Shorter than an ordinary injury claim, and it runs from the act or omission itself, not from when you discovered it. Where there has been continuous treatment for the same condition, the clock may run from the end of that treatment instead.
Lavern’s Law — the cancer exception
For a failure to diagnose a cancer or malignant tumor, the period runs from when you knew or reasonably should have known of the misdiagnosis, subject to an outer limit. It exists because the old rule barred patients before they had any way of knowing they were harmed.
CPLR §3012-a — certificate of merit
A malpractice complaint must generally be accompanied by a certificate confirming that counsel consulted a qualified physician who believes there is a reasonable basis for the case. In practice this means an expert reviews your records before anything is filed.
What has to be proved
Four things: that a doctor-patient relationship existed, that the care departed from the accepted standard of practice, that the departure caused your injury, and that the injury produced real damages.
Causation is where these cases are usually won or lost. Patients are often already sick, and the defense is almost always that the outcome came from the underlying disease rather than the treatment. Separating the two takes qualified experts reading the complete record.
The claims we see most
- Failure to diagnose — cancer, heart attack, stroke, infection, appendicitis
- Misread imaging, pathology or laboratory results
- Surgical error, including wrong-site surgery and retained instruments
- Anesthesia errors and monitoring failures
- Birth injury, including hypoxic injury and improper delivery management
- Medication and dosing errors
- Emergency department failures to admit or to work up symptoms
- Nursing and post-operative monitoring failures
If a public hospital was involved, the clock is much shorter
Claims involving a municipal or public-benefit hospital generally require a notice of claim within 90 days under General Municipal Law §50-e, with suit to follow within a much shorter window than the ordinary malpractice period.
Whether a hospital is public is not always obvious from its name. It is the first thing to establish, because getting it wrong ends the claim before the medicine is ever examined.
Get the complete record early
You are entitled to your medical records under Public Health Law §18. Request them in full — not the discharge summary, the entire chart, including nursing notes, imaging, order entries and the electronic audit trail showing who accessed what and when.
Records are also where a case is quietly lost. Late entries and amendments happen, and the audit trail is what reveals them.
How long you have to act
- Three years from the date of the accident for most negligence claims (CPLR §214).
- Two years for wrongful death (EPTL §5-4.1).
- 90 days to serve a notice of claim where a city, county, school district, transit authority or other public body is involved (General Municipal Law §50-e), with suit generally within one year and 90 days.
The 90-day rule is the one that quietly ends otherwise strong cases. If a public entity may be involved, that is the first thing to check — not the last.
What it costs
Nothing up front. These cases are handled on contingency: there is no fee unless we win, and the consultation is free. You will be told the percentage and how expenses are handled, in writing, before you sign anything.
Common questions
My doctor apologized. Does that prove malpractice?
No. New York law shields certain expressions of sympathy from being used as an admission. An apology is not evidence of a departure from the standard of care, and its absence is not evidence there was none.
The hospital says I signed a consent form.
Consent covers the known risks of a properly performed procedure. It is not a waiver of negligent performance, and a signed form does not end a claim.
How long do these cases take?
Longer than most injury claims. Expert review alone takes months, and malpractice defendants settle less readily than insurers in ordinary negligence cases. We will give you a realistic horizon at the outset rather than an optimistic one.
