Exceptions to New York’s Statute of Limitations – Chopra & Nocerino Case Study

There has been a time where a client has come to us where the statute of limitation has run. Not particularly for a 3 year statute of limitation, but more so for a notice of claim, which is this case which involves a city, and you have a certain amount of time to file your claim with the city and put them on notice of your claim. Many people don’t realize that that statue is far, far less than a 3 year window, and therefore, they miss a window of opportunity to try and pursue their claim. And because of that, many people then subsequently find out that, oh, it’s too late. That’s happened several times at our firm actually, and we filed the necessary motions to reinstate that person’s interest in the case and relitigate issues involving their case to open the door so they do have an opportunity to pursue their claim. And so, yes, there are ways, but obviously the best way is to do it timely. One actual example of this was a case where the client came to us after the 90 day statute of limitations against the city of New York had run, and he wanted to pursue his case and, we decided to make an attempt on it, we made a motion, it’s called a motion to file, to serve a late notice of plan. And when the judge and the courts look at this, they do a balancing test and whether or not there’s any prejudice. In that particular case that this happened and this happened several times is correct throughout our firm’s history, but this particular case, they looked at whether or not there was any notice whether the city knew about it. And the city had actually responded to the scene and a city ambulance had also responded to the scene. And we used that record from the city ambulance and the record from the agency that responded because of what had caused the accident as part of our motion papers and the court granted our motion because there was no prejudice and they were on notice of the claim from the date of the accident.