Slip and Fall Statute of Limitations in New York: 3 Years, 90 Days

The slip and fall statute of limitations in New York is three years from the date of the accident when you’re suing a private property owner, but that deadline collapses to as little as 90 days for the first required step when the property belongs to a government entity. Death claims, federal property, and injuries to minors each follow their own timeline. Miss the applicable deadline and the claim is almost always over, regardless of how badly you were hurt or how clearly someone else was at fault.

Three Years to Sue a Private Property Owner

Under New York’s Civil Practice Law and Rules, you have three years from the date of the fall to file a personal injury lawsuit against a private defendant.¹ The clock starts the day the accident happens, not the day you understand how serious your injuries are. Fall on a broken staircase on March 15, 2026, and you have until March 15, 2029 to get the summons and complaint filed with the court.

This three-year window covers retail stores, restaurants, apartment buildings, private homes, office landlords, and every other non-government property holder. Defendants raise the expired deadline as a defense early in litigation, and judges treat it as a hard cutoff.

Much Shorter Deadlines Against a City, County, or Other Government Entity

Falls on government-controlled property follow a completely different timeline. A public sidewalk, a public school, a transit authority bus, a county building, a village-owned parking lot — all of these trigger two separate deadlines, and both are easy to miss.

90 Days to Serve a Notice of Claim

Before you can file a lawsuit, you must serve a formal Notice of Claim on the government entity within 90 days of the accident.² The notice tells the city, county, town, village, school district, or other public body that you intend to sue. It has to state the time, place, and manner of the injury, along with the nature of the claim and the damages you’re seeking.

This step is a prerequisite. Without it, the lawsuit itself cannot proceed. After receiving the notice, the government entity can demand a 50-h hearing, where you answer questions under oath about how the accident happened and what injuries you sustained.³

One Year and 90 Days to File the Lawsuit

Even after you’ve served the Notice of Claim, the deadline for filing the actual lawsuit is far shorter than the three years private defendants get. You must commence the action within one year and 90 days of the accident.⁴ That’s roughly 15 months, and a large portion of it is consumed by the notice requirement and the 50-h hearing. People who don’t understand how compressed this schedule is lose their claims entirely.

Late Notice of Claim: A Limited Rescue

Missing the 90-day notice deadline does not always end the case. A court can grant permission to file a late notice, but you have to ask, and any extension cannot push past the one-year-and-90-day lawsuit deadline.² Once that outer deadline passes, no court can help you.

The most important factor judges weigh is whether the government entity already knew the essential facts within the original 90 days. An incident report, an ambulance response, or other contemporaneous awareness works in your favor. Courts also consider infancy, physical or mental incapacity, and reasonable reliance on settlement talks with the government’s insurer. Cutting the other way: whether the delay hurt the government’s ability to investigate. This is discretionary, and permission is never guaranteed.

Wrongful Death Runs on a Different Clock

When a fall causes death, the personal representative of the estate has two years from the date of death to bring a wrongful death action.⁵ The clock runs from the death, not the fall, which matters when someone lives for weeks or months before dying from the injuries.

Against a government entity, a wrongful death lawsuit must be filed within two years of the death rather than the usual one year and 90 days.⁴ The 90-day Notice of Claim requirement still applies, and that 90-day clock runs from the appointment of the estate’s representative.

Federal Property Follows Federal Law

If the fall happened on federal property — a post office, federal courthouse, VA hospital, or military base — New York’s rules don’t apply at all. The Federal Tort Claims Act controls. You have two years from the accident to submit a written administrative claim to the responsible federal agency, filed on Standard Form 95.⁶

The agency then has six months to respond. If it denies the claim or does nothing, you have six months from the denial to file suit in federal court.⁶ Skip the administrative step and a federal court will dismiss the case. People trip up here by filing a lawsuit directly without realizing the administrative claim comes first.

When the Clock Pauses

New York pauses, or “tolls,” the statute of limitations for people who can’t reasonably be expected to file on their own. The rules are more generous than most people expect, but they have real limits.

Minors

If the injured person is under 18 at the time of the fall, the statute of limitations does not start running until their 18th birthday. The standard three-year window then applies against private defendants, giving the person until age 21 to file. The ten-year cap that governs other tolling does not apply to minors in personal injury cases, so a child injured at age 2 still has until age 21.⁷

Government claims work differently. The 90-day Notice of Claim and the one-year-and-90-day lawsuit deadline still apply, though a court may weigh infancy when deciding whether to permit a late notice.² Parents of an injured child should not assume the municipal deadlines toll the same way private ones do.

Mental Incapacity

If someone is mentally unable to manage their own affairs when injured, the clock pauses for the duration of that incapacity, capped at ten years from the date of the accident.⁷ Once the disability lifts, the person must file within the remaining statutory period, with at least three years available from the date the disability ends when the standard period is three years or more.

Active-Duty Military Service

Under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, the entire period of active-duty military service is excluded from any filing deadline.⁸ The servicemember does not have to prove that military duty actually prevented filing. Tolling is automatic and runs from entry into service until release. Whatever time remained on the original deadline picks up from there.

The Discovery Rule and Latent Injuries

The standard rule is that the clock starts the day you fall, even if you don’t realize the full extent of the injury until later. There is a narrow exception for harm caused by exposure to a substance that produces delayed effects. Under CPLR 214-c, if the injury resulted from absorbing, inhaling, or being exposed to a substance and the harm did not become apparent right away, the three-year period runs from when you discovered the injury or should have discovered it through reasonable diligence.⁹

This applies to toxic exposure, not to the ordinary slip and fall where you know you’re hurt immediately. If a hazardous substance was involved and symptoms developed weeks or months afterward, the discovery rule may give you more time. The same discovery-based accrual date applies to the 90-day Notice of Claim for government entities.⁹

What Happens If You Miss the Deadline

Once the applicable statute of limitations expires, the defendant moves to dismiss, and courts grant those motions almost without exception.¹⁰ Dismissal does not turn on the strength of your evidence or the severity of your injuries. Time ran out.

Outside the tolling situations above, there is essentially no way to revive an expired claim. Courts are not sympathetic to arguments that you didn’t know about the deadline, that you were negotiating with an insurer, or that you hadn’t yet found a lawyer. Dismissal is with prejudice, and you cannot refile. For government claims, the trap closes sooner because both the 90-day notice and the one-year-and-90-day lawsuit deadline function as strict procedural bars.

The single most common way people lose otherwise valid slip and fall claims in New York is by running out of time. Medical treatment, insurance negotiations, and the search for a lawyer all burn months, and those months count against you whether you have decided to sue or not.

1
New York State Senate. New York Code CVP 214 – Actions to Be Commenced Within Three Years
2
New York State Senate. New York General Municipal Law 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 Senate. New York Estates, Powers and Trusts Law 5-4.1 – Wrongful Death
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States
7
New York State Senate. New York Civil Practice Law and Rules 208 – Infancy, Insanity
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations
9
New York State Senate. New York Civil Practice Law and Rules 214-C – Certain Actions to Be Commenced Within Three Years of Discovery
10
New York State Senate. New York Civil Practice Law and Rules 3211 – Motion to Dismiss