NYC Notice of Claim: 90-Day Deadline, Service, and Contents

If you want to sue New York City or one of its agencies for personal injury, property damage, or wrongful death, you must serve a sworn written notice of claim within 90 calendar days of the incident. The NYC notice of claim 90-day deadline is set by New York’s General Municipal Law § 50-e, and courts treat it as a hard rule.¹ Filing on day 91 without court permission produces a legal nullity the city can reject outright, no matter how strong the underlying facts are.

When the 90 Days Start Running

The clock begins on the date the incident occurs and runs for 90 calendar days straight.¹ Two narrow adjustments apply.

For wrongful death, the 90 days runs from the date a representative is appointed for the deceased person’s estate, not from the date of death.¹ And if the 90th day falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or public holiday, the deadline extends to the next business day under New York’s General Construction Law.²

A warning for parents: the 90-day deadline is not automatically extended for children. If your minor child is injured by a city employee or on city property, the same 90-day clock applies. Infancy is a factor courts consider when deciding whether to allow a late filing, but it does not pause the deadline on its own. Families who assume a child has extra time routinely lose otherwise viable cases.

Who to Serve

Getting the entity wrong is one of the most common ways people forfeit valid claims. The City of New York is the proper party for most incidents involving city agencies like the NYPD, the Department of Transportation, and the Sanitation Department. Several big exceptions sit outside that umbrella:

The Department of Education is a distinct public corporation for incidents on school property.
NYC Health + Hospitals is a separate legal entity, so a medical malpractice claim arising at Bellevue or Elmhurst goes to Health + Hospitals, not the City of New York.
The New York City Transit Authority and MTA are separate public-benefit corporations with their own notice process and their own address for service. If you’re hurt on a city bus or subway platform, your notice goes to the Transit Authority, not the Comptroller’s Office.

Serving the wrong entity does not preserve your rights against the correct one. By the time the mistake surfaces, the 90-day window may have closed.

What the Notice Must Contain

The statute requires four categories of information, and the notice must be in writing and sworn to by the claimant or someone acting on their behalf:¹

The full legal name and mailing address of each claimant, and of their attorney if they have one.
The nature of the claim: a description of what the city did wrong, with enough specificity that the city can understand the allegation and begin investigating.
The time when, the place where, and the manner in which the claim arose. For sidewalk defects, this often means identifying the nearest cross street or building number. Vague descriptions like “somewhere on Broadway” invite dismissal.
The injuries or damages, described as specifically as possible at the time of filing.

The statute uses the phrase “so far as then practicable” for the damages description, which gives some flexibility if you don’t yet know the full extent of your injuries 90 days after the accident.¹ The more detail you include, the harder it is for the city to argue the notice was deficient. List specific body parts injured, medical providers you’ve seen, and any out-of-pocket costs already incurred. Reference and attach photographs when you have them.

The NYC Comptroller’s Office publishes downloadable claim forms organized by category: personal injury, property damage, vehicular damage, water damage, and others.³ Using the correct form for your claim type matters, and the forms must be completed in Adobe Reader rather than a web browser.

How to Serve the Notice

The statute allows three service methods on the City of New York:¹

Personal delivery to the person designated by law to accept service for the public corporation. For New York City, that’s the Comptroller’s Office.
Registered or certified mail. Service is legally complete the moment you deposit the notice in a post office within New York State, enclosed in a properly addressed, postpaid wrapper. The mailing date controls; you don’t need to wait for the city to actually receive it.
Electronic filing. The statute allows this for cities with a population over one million, which includes New York City. The Comptroller’s eClaim system handles it.³

With eClaim, you download the correct form, complete it in Adobe Reader, then upload it through the portal along with any supporting documents or photographs. When the submission goes through, the system generates an electronic receipt with a unique claim number. Save that receipt. It is your proof that service was timely and your reference for all future correspondence. Electronic service is complete when the system successfully transmits the receipt to you.¹

One built-in safety net: if you file within the 90-day window but use the wrong method of service, the notice can still be valid if the correct entity actually receives it and fails to return it within 30 days specifying the defect. If the entity does return it for a service defect, you get 10 additional days to re-serve properly.¹ This forgiveness only covers errors in the method of service. It does not rescue a notice filed with the wrong entity.

If You Miss the 90 Days

Your only path forward is asking a judge for permission to serve a late notice. The court has discretion to grant the extension, but it is not guaranteed, and it cannot extend the deadline beyond the statute of limitations for the lawsuit itself: one year and 90 days from the date of the incident.¹ Once that outer window closes, no court can grant you relief.

Courts weigh several factors when deciding whether to allow late filing:

Whether the city or its insurer learned the essential facts of the claim within 90 days or a reasonable time after. This is the most heavily weighted factor. If the city had no idea the incident occurred, late filing is an uphill fight.
Whether the claimant was a minor, physically or mentally incapacitated, or died before the deadline passed.
Whether the claimant delayed because an authorized city representative made settlement promises.
Whether the claimant served a notice on the wrong public corporation in good faith.
Whether the delay made it substantially harder for the city to defend the claim, for example because a dangerous condition was repaired and evidence destroyed.

A late notice served without a court order first is a legal nullity. The city will reject it, and that rejected filing will not count as giving the city actual knowledge of your claim. You must petition the court, get the order, and then serve.

What Happens After You File

Serving the notice is step one, not the finish line. The city has the right to demand a sworn examination before any lawsuit begins, commonly called a 50-h hearing. It functions like a deposition: a city attorney questions you under oath while a court reporter transcribes. If your claim involves physical injuries, the city can also require a medical examination by a physician of its choosing.⁴

Compliance is mandatory. Skip a demanded hearing without a valid excuse and your claim can be dismissed. You cannot file in Supreme Court until you have satisfied the demand. One timing protection cuts the other way: if the city demands a hearing but fails to conduct it within 90 days of serving the demand, you become free to file your lawsuit without waiting any longer.⁵ If the delay is your fault, because you requested an adjournment that pushed the hearing past the 90-day mark, you lose that protection.

The hearing transcript belongs to you, and you or your attorney have the right to request a copy.⁵ Get it. Your testimony becomes locked-in evidence, and the city will use any inconsistency to attack your credibility at trial.

The Lawsuit Deadline

Filing the notice does not let you wait indefinitely to sue. The lawsuit itself must be filed within one year and 90 days from the date of the incident.⁶ For wrongful death, the deadline is two years from the date of death. These are hard cutoffs.

There is also a minimum waiting period on the front end. You cannot file suit until at least 30 days have passed since you served the notice, and the city has either refused the claim or ignored it.⁶ If you served the notice through the Secretary of State rather than directly on the city, the waiting period is 40 days.

The practical sequence usually runs like this: serve the notice of claim within 90 days, respond to any 50-h demand, attend the hearing, and if the city declines to settle, file the lawsuit before the one-year-and-90-day mark. Every step depends on the one before it. If you have a viable claim against New York City, treat the 90-day notice deadline as the single most important date on your calendar.

1
New York State Senate. New York General Municipal Law 50-E – Notice of Claim
2
New York State Senate. New York General Construction Law 25-A – Public Holiday, Saturday or Sunday in Statutes
3
Office of the New York City Comptroller. eClaim Filing
4
New York State Senate. New York General Municipal Law 50-H – Examination of Claims
5
New York State Senate. General Municipal Law 50-H – Examination of Claims
6
New York State Senate. New York General Municipal Law 50-I – Presentation of Tort Claims; Commencement of Actions