Decision Day: New York Injury Case Law
New appellate decisions on New York injury law, reviewed by Frank N. Eskesen.
New York’s appellate courts release decisions several days a week. On release days, we read the official decisions and pick out the ones that matter to injured people and their lawyers: rulings that change the law, split from other courts, or teach a practical lesson. Each entry gives the bottom line, the facts, and the holding in the court’s own words, followed by our view, clearly labeled. Every entry links to the official text of the decision.
Decision Day summarizes and comments on published court decisions. It is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case depends on its own facts. Unless an entry says otherwise, The Eskesen Law Firm did not represent any party in these cases.
4 decisions
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Emailing a Notice of Claim to NYC Transit Is Not Valid Service (Kopitova v NYCTA, 2d Dept 2026)
Unless email is an authorized method of service for a Notice of Claim, claimants must ensure that papers are served in a manner that the law allows. Here, the Second Department upheld the dismissal of an injured woman’s case, ruling that even though an NYCTA lawyer received the emailed Claim, NYCTA’s prompt rejection required the Claimant to serve by authorized means.
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Late Notice of Claim Allowed Against NYC Transit Because a Passenger’s Timely Notice Covered the Same Crash (Matter of Tkebuchava v NYCTA, 2d Dept 2026)
A missed 90-day deadline does not always end a case. Here, the driver of a car hit by a New York City Transit Authority bus missed the deadline, but a passenger on the bus had served her own timely Notice of Claim, which gave the authority actual knowledge of the essential facts, and the authority made no showing that the delay hurt its defense.
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Slip-and-Fall Video Overwritten After a Preservation Letter: Adverse Inference Charge Ordered (Fernandez v Port Auth. of N.Y. & N.J., 2d Dept 2026)
Where there is a question of fact as to the time a preservation letter is received and the time when the video is destroyed, the jury is to determine whether “spoliation of evidence” occurred. Here, in a slip-and-fall case against an airline, the Second Department held that “[t]he appropriate sanction” for any spoliation “would be an adverse inference charge” against the airline.
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An Affirmation Without CPLR 2106’s Perjury Language Is Not Evidence in Admissible Form (Interasian v Park, 1st Dept 2026)
Every affirmation must explicitly state that it is made “under the penalties of perjury under the laws of New York, which may include a fine or imprisonment” as CPLR 2106 requires. Here, the First Department reversed a $9.2 million judgment, in part because all of the plaintiff’s evidence came in through an attorney affirmation that failed to substantially conform to that language.
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