New York GML § 50-e: Notice of Claim, 50-h Hearing, and Deadlines

In New York, the notice of claim 90 day requirement means that before you can sue a city, county, town, village, school district, or most other public entities for a personal injury, property damage, or wrongful death claim, you must serve a sworn written Notice of Claim on that entity within 90 calendar days of the incident. This is set by General Municipal Law § 50-e, and courts treat it as a hard prerequisite: no timely notice, no lawsuit.¹

Which Claims and Entities Trigger the Requirement

The notice rule applies to tort claims — personal injury, property damage, and wrongful death — brought against a “public corporation” as New York defines the term. That covers municipal corporations (cities, counties, towns, villages), district corporations (school districts, fire districts, ambulance districts), and public benefit corporations.¹ A fall on a town-maintained sidewalk, an injury on school property, or a collision with a county vehicle all fall inside it.

Suits against individual government employees for things they did on the job also trigger the requirement, because the public corporation that would have to indemnify the employee needs to be served. If you’re suing the employee alone and no public corporation has a statutory duty to cover the judgment, the requirement may not reach the corporation.¹ In practice, most on-duty conduct is covered.

A few claim types are exempt: workers’ compensation, volunteer firefighter benefits, volunteer ambulance worker benefits, and claims by infant wards of the public corporation itself. The statute also does not apply to certain revived childhood sexual abuse claims under CPLR § 208-a.²

When the 90 Days Start

For most claims, the 90-day clock starts on the date of injury or property damage. It runs on calendar days, and it does not pause for weekends, holidays, or a claimant’s unawareness of the rule.¹

Wrongful death is the notable exception. The 90 days begin when the personal representative of the decedent’s estate is appointed by the court, not on the date of death.¹ Because probate takes time, this gives families some breathing room, but the moment appointment is entered, the clock is running.

What Has to Be in the Notice

The Notice of Claim must be in writing and sworn to before a notary by the claimant or someone acting on the claimant’s behalf. Four categories of information are required:¹

The full name and mailing address of each claimant, plus the name and address of any attorney representing them.
The nature of the claim — what happened and why the entity is responsible. Generic phrases like “dangerous condition” are not enough. Describe the specific defect: a four-inch sidewalk drop-off, a missing stair guardrail, and so on.
The time, place, and manner in which the claim arose. The municipality needs enough detail to locate the exact spot and reconstruct the conditions.
The injuries or damages sustained, to the extent known when you file.

Watch the dollar-amount rule, because it flips depending on the defendant. For claims against any municipality other than New York City, you must not state a specific dollar amount in the notice. The municipality can later ask for a supplemental statement of damages, and you have 15 days to provide it once requested.¹ For claims against New York City, the notice should include the amount claimed. Getting this backward is a common early mistake.

New York does not require a single statewide form. Some municipalities publish their own template; using one when it’s available helps you avoid missing an element. Vague descriptions of where or how the incident happened are where most deficient notices fail.

How and Where to Serve It

Three service methods are authorized:¹

Personal delivery to the person legally designated by the entity to accept service of process, typically a clerk or board member.
Certified or registered mail to that same designated person. Service by mail is complete on receipt, so keep the return receipt.
Delivery to an attorney who regularly represents the public corporation.

New York City also accepts electronic filing in the form and manner the city prescribes.¹

Serving the correct recipient matters as much as meeting the deadline. Dropping the notice at a police precinct, a random department, or a general office within the entity may not qualify as valid service. For a school district, the proper recipient is a member of the board of education or the district clerk. For a city, it is usually the city clerk or the corporation counsel. When in doubt, check the entity’s charter or call the clerk’s office. Save your proof of delivery, whether that is a process server’s affidavit or a certified mail receipt.

What Happens After You File: The 50-h Hearing

Filing the notice is not the last step before suit. Under GML § 50-h, the municipality can demand an oral examination of you under oath about the incident and your injuries, and can also require a physical examination by a physician.³ This is separate from any later deposition in the lawsuit itself.

The demand must be served on you or your attorney within 90 days after you filed the Notice of Claim, in writing, stating the time, place, and subject matter. If the location sits outside the municipality you are suing, you can demand within 10 days that the hearing be moved inside it. You may have your own attorney and physician present, and may bring a relative or another person of your choosing.³

If a 50-h hearing is demanded, you cannot start your lawsuit until you comply. If the municipality fails to hold the hearing within 90 days of serving its demand, you can proceed. But if the delay is on your side — you didn’t appear, or you asked for a postponement that pushed the hearing past 90 days — you stay blocked until you actually attend.³

The 30-Day Wait and the One-Year-and-90-Day Deadline

Even after serving the notice and completing any 50-h hearing, GML § 50-i requires at least 30 days to pass after service before you can file suit, or 40 days if service was made through the Secretary of State. Your complaint must allege that the municipality neglected or refused to settle or pay the claim during that period.⁴

The outer deadline is strict: the lawsuit itself must be filed within one year and 90 days of the incident.⁴⁵ Wrongful death actions get two years from the date of death. The 50-h process does not extend the statute of limitations. So the working timeline is: notice within 90 days, attend any demanded hearing promptly, file suit within one year and 90 days. Delay on any step eats into the time available for the others.

If You Miss the 90 Days

Missing the deadline does not automatically end the claim, but saving it is difficult and rests entirely on the court’s discretion. Under § 50-e(5), you can apply to a judge for permission to serve a late Notice of Claim. The application itself must be made before the one-year-and-90-day statute of limitations runs; once that outer deadline passes, no court has authority to grant leave.¹

The single most important factor is whether the municipality actually learned the essential facts of the claim within 90 days or a reasonable time after. A police report at the scene, an ambulance response, or an internal investigation can supply that knowledge even without a formal notice, and courts weigh this heavily.¹

The statute also directs courts to consider:²

Whether the claimant was a minor, was physically or mentally incapacitated, or died before the 90 days ran.
Whether the claimant reasonably relied on settlement discussions with an authorized representative of the public corporation or its insurer.
Whether the claimant made a good-faith mistake about which public corporation was responsible and served the wrong one.
In New York City, whether a computer system failure prevented timely electronic filing, when the claimant can show they tried.
Whether the delay has substantially prejudiced the municipality’s ability to defend — lost witnesses, altered scenes, missing evidence.

Prejudice usually decides close cases. Simple procrastination, forgetfulness, or attorney oversight is not treated sympathetically. If you realize you have missed the window, filing the late-notice application immediately gives you the best chance.

Fixing Mistakes in a Notice You Already Filed

A notice with errors is not automatically fatal. Section 50-e(6) permits a court to overlook or correct a good-faith mistake, omission, or defect at any stage, as long as the error is not about how or when the notice was served and the municipality was not prejudiced.² Listing the wrong intersection while accurately describing the defect can be excused if the municipality was still able to investigate. Serving the notice four months late, or on the wrong entity, goes to time and manner of service and is not covered by this safety valve.

Federal Civil Rights Claims Are Outside the Rule

If your claim against a New York municipality is a federal civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 — excessive force, unlawful arrest, due process violations — the Notice of Claim requirement does not apply. In Felder v. Casey (1988), the U.S. Supreme Court held that state notice-of-claim statutes are preempted when applied to § 1983 actions, whether filed in state or federal court.⁶

The distinction matters when a single incident produces both kinds of claims. A police encounter that causes injury can generate a state negligence or assault claim, which still requires notice within 90 days, and a § 1983 claim, which does not. Miss the 90 days and you can lose the state claim while keeping the federal one, which carries its own separate statute of limitations. Sorting the two out early is often the first task in any case involving on-duty government employees.

1
New York State Senate. New York General Municipal Law 50-E – Notice of Claim
2
New York State Senate. New York General Municipal Law Section 50-E – Notice of Claim
3
New York State Senate. New York General Municipal Law 50-H – Examination of Claims
4
New York State Senate. New York General Municipal Law 50-I – Presentation of Tort Claims Commencement of Actions
5
New York State Unified Court System. Statute of Limitations Chart
6
Justia. Felder v Casey, 487 US 131 (1988)