Subway, Bus & MTA Injury Lawyers in New York

Injured on the Subway or a City Bus? You Have 90 Days, Not Three Years.

The MTA and the New York City Transit Authority are public entities, and suing a public entity in New York starts with a notice of claim served within 90 days of the injury.

Miss it and the case can be over before it begins, no matter how badly the stairwell was maintained or how plainly the bus driver was at fault.

The lawsuit itself is due within one year and 90 days, not the three years that applies to a private defendant.

Which is why the first question in one of these cases is not what happened. It is who owned the vehicle or the station.

Get that answer wrong and you calendar the wrong deadline.

There is a second surprise waiting in these files: a subway claim and a bus claim run on different insurance law entirely.

Which Transit Defendant You Have Decides Which Calendar You Are On

New York's transit network is not one legal entity. It is an authority, its subsidiaries, and a set of contractors, and each has its own statutory pathway. Public Authorities Law § 1212 governs claims against the New York City Transit Authority and requires a notice of claim served under General Municipal Law § 50-e, with tort actions commenced no more than one year and 90 days after the event.^[1]

Access-A-Ride is where this goes wrong most often. Paratransit trips are frequently operated by private carriers under contract, and a claim against a private company carries the ordinary three-year deadline rather than the 90-day notice requirement. Naming the wrong party, or assuming the ordinary deadline because a private logo was on the door, is how a good paratransit case gets lost.

The notice itself is not a letter. General Municipal Law § 50-e requires a sworn document containing specific information, and the entity is entitled to examine the claimant under § 50-h before suit.^[2] Our page on the 90-day notice of claim covers the required contents and the traps in each one.

Why a Bus Injury Claim and a Subway Injury Claim Are Not the Same Case

Both are MTA claims. They live under different bodies of insurance law, and the difference is worth real money.

A Bus Is a Motor Vehicle

So an injured bus passenger is a covered person: no-fault benefits pay the first $50,000 in medical expenses and partial lost earnings regardless of fault, written notice is due within 30 days, and the claim for pain and suffering has to clear the serious injury threshold in Insurance Law § 5102(d). Eight categories qualify after the May 2026 reform. The same insurance analysis applies on a private coach, though the defendant and the deadline are completely different, which our page on charter and tour bus accidents covers.

Worse, the reform's new fault bar applies. CPLR § 1411(b) ends recovery in a motor vehicle claim where the injured person's fault exceeds the defendant's. A passenger standing on a moving bus has no fault to allocate, so this rarely bites a seated or standing rider. It bites the person struck by a bus while walking or driving.

A Subway Train Is Not

Rail vehicles fall outside the motor vehicle definition, which means a subway injury claim has no no-fault component at all. No PIP benefits arrive, so health insurance carries the treatment. In exchange, there is no serious injury threshold to clear and no motor vehicle fault bar, so New York's pure comparative negligence rule still governs and a share of fault reduces the recovery rather than eliminating it.

For a badly injured rider with soft-tissue or disc injuries, that is a meaningful advantage. The threshold fight that consumes New York auto litigation, and that decides the value of a herniated disc claim in a car case, is not part of a subway case at all.

What This Means Practically

Two people can be hurt in the same station on the same afternoon, one on a platform and one boarding a bus outside, and their claims will be valued by different rules. That is not a technicality to sort out later. It changes what evidence matters, what the insurer can argue, and what the case is worth.

The Common Carrier Rule Is Not What Most People Think

For most of the twentieth century New York held common carriers to a duty of extraordinary care toward their passengers. Plenty of websites still say so.

The Court of Appeals ended that in 1998. In Bethel v. New York City Transit Authority, a case about a wheelchair-accessible bus seat that collapsed, the Court abandoned the extraordinary-care standard and held that a common carrier owes the same duty as any other defendant: reasonable care under all of the circumstances of the particular case.^[3]

So the MTA is not automatically liable because you were hurt on its property. What actually wins these cases is notice: proof that the Authority knew, or should have known, about the broken tread, the missing handrail, the water accumulating at the top of the stairs, or the door mechanism that had failed before. Maintenance records, prior complaints, inspection logs, and prior incident reports at the same location are the case.

That evidence sits with the defendant, and a notice of claim served early is what starts the process of prying it loose.

How Riders Actually Get Hurt in the Transit System

The recurring patterns in these files, each with its own proof problem:

Stairs, Platforms, and Station Conditions

Worn or broken treads, missing or loose handrails, water intrusion, poor lighting, and the platform gap itself. Volume makes these the most common transit claims and repetition makes them provable, because a hazard that injured someone last year is documented somewhere.

Doors, Sudden Stops, and Train Movement

Doors closing on a passenger, a train starting while someone is still boarding, or a stop violent enough to throw standing riders. The vehicle's own data and the crew's report are where these are decided, and both are the Authority's property.

Bus Operation and Boarding

Pulling away from a stop before an elderly rider is seated, stopping far from the curb, a lift or ramp failure, or a collision with another vehicle. Bus cases carry the added layer of no-fault benefits and the threshold, and often a second insurer.

Assaults and Inadequate Security

An assault by a third party can support a claim where the location had a documented history of similar incidents and the security response was inadequate to a foreseeable risk. These are hard cases and they are not hopeless ones; the analysis turns on what the Authority knew about that station.

Track and Right-of-Way Injuries

Contact incidents involving people on the tracks and injuries to transit workers, where federal and state rail safety obligations enter alongside the ordinary negligence analysis.

What Compensation Can You Recover in an MTA Injury Claim?

New York does not cap compensatory damages against a transit authority:

• Medical expenses - Emergency care through surgery and rehabilitation, and future treatment where the injury is permanent. On a bus claim, no-fault pays the first layer and the liability claim covers the rest
• Lost earnings and lost earning capacity - Including the difference between what you earned before and what the injury allows now
• Pain and suffering - Uncapped, with no threshold to clear on a subway or rail claim
• Permanent disability, disfigurement, and scarring
• Loss of enjoyment of life - What the injury took out of daily function and independence
• Wrongful death and survival damages - Pecuniary loss to the family under New York's restrictive wrongful death rule, plus the decedent's own conscious pain and suffering. Our page on how New York limits a wrongful death recovery explains what that limitation does and does not allow

Prejudgment interest and the structured judgment rules in CPLR Article 50-B affect how a large verdict is actually paid, and New York's no-cap rule on compensatory damages covers the mechanics.