Prior Written Notice and the Big Apple Map

Can You Sue New York City for a Pothole, Broken Street, or Defective Crosswalk?

Only if someone already told the City about that exact defect, in writing, before you were hurt.

Administrative Code § 7-201(c) is the reason. New Yorkers call it the Pothole Law, and it bars a claim against the City over a street or sidewalk that is out of repair unless written notice of the condition reached the Department of Transportation first and the City then failed to fix it.

That sounds like an impossible requirement. It is not, because of a filing system almost nobody outside this practice has heard of.

The Big Apple Pothole and Sidewalk Protection Corporation surveys the five boroughs and files defect maps with the City. Those maps are the written notice the statute demands.

So the real question in a City street case is narrow and answerable: does the map show your defect, at your location, with the right symbol.

It is the difference between a claim and a dismissal, and it can be checked in the first week.

What Administrative Code § 7-201(c) Requires Before a Claim Against the City Can Proceed

The statute is written as a bar rather than a duty. No civil action may be maintained against the City for injury sustained because a street, highway, bridge, wharf, culvert, sidewalk, or crosswalk was out of repair, unsafe, dangerous, or obstructed, unless written notice of that condition was actually given to the Commissioner of Transportation, and there was a failure to repair or remove the defect within 15 days after receipt of the notice.^[1]

Two other routes satisfy the statute. Written notice to a city agency of a previous injury caused by the same condition counts. So does a written acknowledgement from the City that the condition exists.

Read that list closely, because every word of it does work:

• Written. A phone call does not qualify. Neither does a City inspector standing on the corner looking at the hole.
• Actually given. Notice that should have reached the Commissioner but did not is no notice at all.
• Of the condition. Notice of a different defect on the same block does not carry over to yours.
• Fifteen days. The City gets a repair window. An injury inside it generally does not produce liability even where notice was perfect.

The statute also requires the Department of Transportation to keep an indexed record of every written notice and acknowledgement it receives, showing the date, the nature and location of the condition, and who reported it. That record is public, it is retained for three years, and it is preserved in the municipal archives after that. It is the first thing worth subpoenaing in one of these cases, and it is the reason a City defect claim is provable at all.

The Big Apple Map: Written Notice Filed Before Anyone Gets Hurt

The Big Apple Pothole and Sidewalk Protection Corporation exists for one reason: to satisfy § 7-201(c) in advance. It was organized by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, it surveys streets and sidewalks across the five boroughs, and it files maps with the Department of Transportation on which coded symbols mark defects by type and location.

Maps prepared by Big Apple and filed with the City serve as prior written notice of the conditions shown on them. That is the whole mechanism. Nobody has to have complained about your pothole for the statute to be satisfied, as long as a surveyor charted it and the map went in.

Working with the map is its own skill, and it is where these cases are won or lost:

• The map has to predate the injury. A defect first charted after your fall proves nothing about what the City knew before it.
• The symbol has to describe your defect. The legend distinguishes among broken, raised, and uneven conditions, holes, depressions, and obstructions. A symbol for a cracked flag does not establish notice of a hole.
• The location has to line up. Courts have thrown out claims where the plaintiff's own testimony about where the fall happened did not match the mapped position closely enough.
• The 15 days still apply. Notice plus an unrepaired condition is the claim. Notice alone is not.

This is why the map should be pulled and read against the client's own account before anyone drafts a notice of claim. The answer shapes the entire case, and it is available immediately.

Where the Notice Rule Applies, and Where the Building Owner Is the Defendant Instead

Prior written notice is a City problem. Since 2003, most sidewalk claims are not City claims at all, because Administrative Code § 7-210 moved sidewalk maintenance onto the owner of the abutting property.^[2] Sorting which regime applies is the first decision in the case, and getting it wrong wastes the only deadline that cannot be recovered.

The rule also has a boundary the City argues past. The notice requirement is authorized only for a short list of enumerated locations, so a fall inside a park, a playground, or a municipal building is not a prior written notice case at all, even though the 90-day notice of claim still governs it. That distinction is the subject of our page on falls on New York City property.

Two deadlines are running the moment you are hurt, and only one of them is generous. Which side of the line your case falls on is answered by ownership records and the certificate of occupancy, not by looking at the pavement. Our page on who is liable for a New York City sidewalk fall works through the ownership question, and the 90-day notice of claim covers the City track once you are on it.

 

The Two Exceptions That Beat the Prior Written Notice Requirement

The Court of Appeals has recognized exactly two ways around the statute, and it has refused to add a third.^[3] Plaintiffs have argued that a municipality should lose the protection when it should have known about a defect through ordinary diligence. That argument has been rejected. Constructive notice is not a substitute for prior written notice.

The City Created the Defect Through an Affirmative Act of Negligence

Where the municipality's own crews caused the hazard, it cannot hide behind a notice rule designed to tell it about hazards it did not make. A botched street cut, a repaved patch that sank, a manhole reset out of grade, a paving job that left a lip.

The limit matters as much as the rule. The affirmative act has to immediately result in the dangerous condition. A City repair that was fine when finished and deteriorated over the next two winters is not covered, because the danger came from time rather than from the work. This is the single most common reason a promising City claim fails.

A Special Use Conferred a Special Benefit

Where the City derived a special benefit from the portion of the street or walkway at issue, the notice requirement gives way. This exception is narrower against the City than it is against private owners, where special use is a live theory in cellar door, hatchway, and grating cases. Our page on cellar door and sidewalk grate falls covers how special use works when the beneficiary is a building rather than a municipality.

What Proving an Exception Actually Takes

Both exceptions are evidence problems, not argument problems. The proof lives in DOT permit and street opening records, contractor files, resurfacing histories, 311 service requests, prior inspection reports, and dated photography showing how the surface changed. Records like these are requested, not received, and they take time to produce.

Which is why the exception analysis starts in the first month rather than after a motion is filed. By the time the City moves to dismiss on notice grounds, the window to develop the affirmative-negligence record has usually closed.

Injuries That Come Out of Potholes, Roadway Defects, and Broken Crosswalks

Street defect falls happen without warning and without a chance to break the fall, which is why the injury pattern skews severe. A pedestrian catching a foot in a sunken street cut goes down at full walking speed. A cyclist whose wheel drops into a pothole is thrown over the bars into traffic.

• Ankle and foot fractures. Trimalleolar and bimalleolar fractures from a foot caught in a hole or a lip, often requiring plates, screws, and a year of recovery.
• Wrist, elbow, and shoulder injuries. Distal radius fractures, olecranon fractures, and rotator cuff and labral tears from the instinctive attempt to break a fall.
• Hip fractures in older New Yorkers. The injury that most often ends independent living, with mortality risk that has nothing to do with how the fall looked.
• Head injury and concussion. Including cases where imaging is normal and the symptoms are real, which the defense will treat as the same thing.
• Knee injuries. Meniscal tears, ACL ruptures, and patellar fractures from a twisting fall on uneven pavement.
• Facial and dental trauma. Common when a pedestrian goes down forward with hands full and cannot brace.
• Cyclist injuries. Clavicle fractures, spinal injuries, and secondary impact with a vehicle after a pothole throws the rider into the lane.

Severity drives value, and severity is documented in the treatment record rather than argued. Getting evaluated, following through on care, and letting the record reflect what actually happened is worth more to the claim than anything said to an adjuster.

Damages Recoverable in a Claim Against the City of New York

New York does not cap compensatory damages, and a municipal defendant does not change that. What a City street defect claim can recover is the same set a private premises claim recovers.

• Medical expenses. Emergency care, surgery, hospitalization, imaging, physical therapy, assistive equipment, and the future treatment your physicians project.
• Lost earnings. Wages and income lost during recovery, plus diminished earning capacity where the injury changes what you can do for a living.
• Pain and suffering. The largest component in most serious fall cases, valued by comparison to what New York appellate courts have sustained on similar injuries rather than by formula.
• Loss of enjoyment of life. The activities, independence, and daily function the injury took away.
• Future care and household services. Home health assistance, modifications, and the help an injured person now has to pay for.
• Loss of consortium. A spouse's separate claim for the loss of services and companionship.
• Wrongful death and survival damages. Where a fall proves fatal, the estate's claims run on their own compressed deadlines.

Comparative fault applies, and the City will argue it. New York's pure comparative negligence rule under CPLR § 1411(a) still governs premises claims, so a percentage of fault reduces a recovery rather than ending it. The motor vehicle carve-out that created a fault cliff in 2026 does not reach a street defect fall. Our page on how comparative fault works in New York explains where each rule applies.

A City Claim Is Decided by Procedure Before It Is Decided by Facts

A claim against the City of New York is decided by procedure long before it is decided by facts. That is an unusual thing to build a case around, and it rewards firms that treat the notice question as the first order of business rather than a formality.

• A New York firm with a New York lawyer. Don Worley has been admitted in New York since 2005 and has practiced personal injury for more than 20 years. Our office at 305 Broadway sits in the Manhattan courthouse district, blocks from the courts where these claims are litigated.
• The notice analysis happens first. Map, legend, location, symbol, and the DOT record, checked against the client's own account before the notice of claim is drafted.
• Both tracks protected at once. Where ownership of the abutting property is unresolved, the City deadline is preserved while the ownership question is answered, because one of those clocks is forgiving and the other is not.
• Insurance companies know our reputation. A file that can be tried is worth more than a file that will always settle, and carriers price the difference.
• Results that reflect real litigation. More than 40,000 cases handled and over $100 million recovered for injured people, with a 98% recovery rate.
• No fee unless we win. The consultation is free, available 24/7, and you owe nothing unless we recover for you.