If you've been hurt on the subway or in a train accident, you're probably dealing with injuries, medical bills, and a lot of questions about what happens next. The short answer is yes, you can sue the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the New York City Transit Authority after an accident. But there's a catch that could make or break your case, and it has nothing to do with whether the accident was their fault.
New York law treats claims against public transportation entities differently than regular personal injury cases. The rules are strict, the deadlines are tight, and missing even one requirement could mean losing your right to compensation entirely, no matter how serious your injuries are.
Can You Sue the MTA After a Subway Accident?
Yes, you can file a lawsuit against the MTA and the New York City Transit Authority if you've been injured. Public Authorities Law Section 1276 specifically allows lawsuits for property damage, personal injuries, and wrongful death caused by the MTA's actions or negligence.
But unlike a typical car accident or slip and fall case where you have three years to file a lawsuit, suing a public entity like the MTA requires jumping through several procedural hoops first. These aren't just technicalities. Courts enforce these requirements strictly, and they don't make exceptions even when the MTA clearly knows about your accident.
The 90-Day Notice Requirement You Cannot Miss
Here's what trips up most people: you only have 90 days from the date of your accident to file something called a notice of claim. Not 90 days to file a lawsuit. Not 90 days to get a lawyer. You have 90 days to file a specific written notice with the MTA, or you lose your right to sue at all.
This comes from New York General Municipal Law Section 50-e, which applies to all claims against public corporations. The notice of claim isn't your lawsuit. It's a formal document that tells the MTA you were hurt, where and when it happened, what injuries you suffered, and that you intend to hold them responsible.
The notice must be sworn to (meaning you sign it under oath), and it needs to include your name and address, your attorney's information if you have one, a description of what happened, and the damages you're claiming. It sounds simple, but the courts have rejected plenty of notices for being too vague or for leaving out required information.
How to Properly Serve Your Notice of Claim
You can't just mail your notice to any MTA office and hope for the best. It has to be served on specific officials who are authorized to accept legal notices. You can deliver it in person, send it by registered or certified mail, or in New York City, you can serve it electronically.
The 90-day clock starts ticking the day your accident happens, not the day you realize how badly you're hurt or the day you finish treating your injuries. If day 90 falls on a weekend or holiday, you don't get extra time. This is one of the harshest differences between suing the MTA and filing a regular personal injury lawsuit.
What Happens If You Miss the 90-Day Deadline?
Missing the deadline doesn't automatically mean your case is over, but you're now fighting an uphill battle. Courts have the discretion to extend the 90-day period, but you have to file a formal application asking for permission, and judges are not generous with these extensions.
The court will consider several factors:
- Did the MTA learn about your accident through their own incident reports or investigations within the 90-day window?
- Were you a minor, mentally incapacitated, or did you pass away before the deadline passed (in which case your family might get an extension)?
- Did you have a legitimate reason to believe the MTA would settle your claim without formal notice?
Even if the MTA knows exactly what happened because their own employees witnessed your accident and filled out reports, that's often not enough. Courts have repeatedly said that actual knowledge doesn't excuse the notice requirement. The law demands strict compliance, and judges interpret it strictly because they believe loosening the rules would create uncertainty and disputes about what should count as proper notice.
What Standard of Care Does the MTA Owe Passengers?
For decades, New York held common carriers like the MTA to an "extraordinary care" standard, meaning they had to provide the highest degree of care humanly possible to protect passengers. That changed in 1998 with a Court of Appeals decision called Bethel v. New York City Transit Authority.
Now the MTA owes passengers a duty of reasonable care under all circumstances. That's the same standard that applies to drivers, property owners, and most other potential defendants in personal injury cases. The shift might sound like it weakens your case, but reasonable care is still a real obligation. The MTA has to maintain its trains and stations properly, operate trains safely, warn passengers of dangers, and take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable accidents.
What counts as reasonable depends on the circumstances. A train operator speeding through a crowded station isn't being reasonable. Leaving a dangerous condition on a platform without fixing it or warning people isn't reasonable. Failing to brake when there's clearly someone in danger isn't reasonable.
How Do You Prove the MTA Was Negligent?
Winning a subway accident case means proving four things: the MTA owed you a duty of care, they breached that duty by acting carelessly or failing to act when they should have, their breach caused your accident, and you suffered real damages as a result.
The specific facts matter enormously. In cases that have gone to trial, injured passengers have successfully proven negligence by showing that train operators failed to see them from a distance where any reasonable operator would have spotted them, that operators didn't use emergency brakes when the situation clearly called for it, that trains entered stations at excessive speeds, or that dangerous conditions existed on platforms and the MTA knew or should have known about them.
Platform Accidents and Constructive Notice
If you were hurt by a defect or dangerous condition on a platform, stairs, or in a station, you need to prove the MTA had what's called constructive notice. That means they either knew about the problem or it had been there long enough that they should have discovered it during routine inspections and maintenance.
This comes up a lot in slip and fall cases. Water on the platform, broken tiles, uneven surfaces, and poor lighting are all conditions the MTA has a duty to discover and fix. But you can't just show that the condition existed. You have to show it was there long enough that the MTA should have found it, or that they actually knew about it and didn't take care of it.
Common carriers have a duty to keep their premises reasonably safe for passengers, but they're not insurers. If someone spills something seconds before you slip on it, that's probably not enough time for the MTA to discover and clean it up. But if there's evidence of a recurring leak that's been causing puddles in the same spot for weeks, that's a different story.
What If You Were Partially at Fault?
New York follows a comparative negligence rule. If you were partially responsible for your own injuries, it doesn't automatically bar you from recovering compensation, but it does reduce what you can collect by your percentage of fault.
Let's say a jury determines your total damages are $100,000, but they also find you were 20% at fault for what happened. You'd recover $80,000. The key is that your own negligence can't be so extreme that it becomes the sole cause of the accident, cutting off the MTA's liability entirely.
Courts recognize that accidents often involve shared fault. Someone might fall onto the tracks because they were standing too close to the edge, but if the train operator saw them fall and had time to brake but failed to do so, both parties might share responsibility. Cases have resulted in fault apportioned 15% to the injured passenger and 85% to the transit authority, and the passenger still recovered damages for their injuries.
What Types of Subway and Train Accidents Lead to Lawsuits?
Accidents happen in numerous ways on public transportation. People get hurt slipping on wet platforms or tripping on defective stairs and escalators. Passengers are injured when trains stop suddenly or when operators brake too hard without warning. Some accidents happen during boarding or exiting when train doors close on passengers or when there's a gap between the platform and the train.
More serious accidents involve people falling or being pushed onto the tracks. Equipment failures, derailments, and collisions between trains can cause catastrophic injuries to everyone on board. Inadequate security can lead to assaults on passengers or employees.
Each type of accident raises different liability questions. A slip and fall case focuses on whether the MTA maintained its premises safely and whether they had notice of the dangerous condition. A sudden stop case might center on whether the operator was traveling at a safe speed and whether they gave passengers adequate warning before braking. A door injury case could involve whether the doors were properly maintained and whether the operator checked for passengers before closing them.
The Emergency Doctrine and MTA Defenses
The MTA doesn't just roll over when you file a lawsuit. One defense they frequently raise is called the emergency doctrine. This legal principle says that when someone faces a sudden and unexpected circumstance that requires immediate action, courts should judge their response based on the emergency context, not based on what they might have done with more time to think.
If a passenger suddenly falls in front of a train, the operator might have only seconds to react. The emergency doctrine recognizes that split-second decisions made under pressure shouldn't be judged the same way as ordinary negligence. But for the doctrine to apply, the emergency has to be something the MTA didn't cause in the first place, and their response still has to be reasonable under the circumstances.
Courts have held that judges must properly instruct juries about the emergency doctrine when there's evidence that a train operator faced an actual emergency. This can significantly affect how a jury views the operator's actions and whether they find those actions negligent.
How Long Do You Have to File the Actual Lawsuit?
After you've filed your notice of claim (and assuming it's accepted or the court grants you an extension if you missed the deadline), you have three years from the date of your accident to file your lawsuit. This is the standard statute of limitations for personal injury cases in New York under CPLR 214(5).
The three-year period runs from the accident date, not from when you filed your notice of claim. So if you file your notice on day 89, you still have just under three years remaining to file suit, not three years from that notice date.
Three years sounds like a lot of time, but personal injury cases take substantial preparation. Your attorney needs to investigate what happened, gather evidence, get your medical records, consult with experts, and build a case that proves negligence and damages. Waiting too long can mean witnesses' memories fade, physical evidence disappears, and records become harder to obtain.
Special Rules for Ongoing Injuries
Here's something many people don't realize: if your injuries continue or worsen after you file your notice of claim, and new damages result, you may need to file additional notices for those new damages. The law treats new or additional damages that arise after the initial notice as separate claims requiring their own notices.
This comes up in cases where someone's injuries initially seem minor but turn out to be much more serious over time. If you filed a notice claiming $50,000 in damages but later discover you need surgery that will cost another $100,000, you can't necessarily just amend your lawsuit. You might need to file a new notice covering those additional damages.
Workers' Compensation vs Personal Injury Claims
If you work for the MTA or a subway contractor and you're injured on the job, you generally can't sue your employer. Instead, you file a workers' compensation claim, which provides benefits for medical treatment and lost wages but doesn't compensate you for pain and suffering in the same way a personal injury lawsuit does.
The notice of claim requirement in Section 50-e doesn't apply to workers' compensation claims. Those follow a completely different set of rules under New York's workers' compensation law. However, if a third party (not your employer) caused your work-related injury, you might be able to file both a workers' compensation claim and a personal injury lawsuit against that third party.
Why These Rules Exist and Why Courts Enforce Them So Strictly
You might be wondering why the law makes it so much harder to sue a public entity than to sue a private person or company. The rationale is that government agencies need early notice of potential claims so they can investigate while evidence is fresh, preserve records, and budget for potential liabilities.
Courts take the position that if the legislature set strict requirements for suing public entities, judges shouldn't soften those requirements no matter how harsh they seem. The New York Court of Appeals has repeatedly said that notice requirements must be strictly construed because they serve important public policy purposes, and creating exceptions would lead to uncertainty and litigation over whether those exceptions should apply.
This means courts will reject a notice that's filed even one day late, even if the MTA suffered no prejudice from the delay and even if they had full knowledge of the accident through their own incident reports. It seems harsh, especially when you're dealing with serious injuries, but it's the law as written and as interpreted by New York's highest court.
What You Should Do Immediately After a Subway or Train Accident
The 90-day deadline means you need to act fast. If you've been injured in a subway or train accident, getting legal help quickly isn't just important, it's essential. An attorney experienced in transit accident cases knows exactly what needs to be in your notice of claim, how to serve it properly, and how to protect your rights throughout the process.
While you're focused on recovering from your injuries, someone needs to be gathering evidence. Take photographs of where the accident happened if you're able to do so safely. Get the names and contact information of anyone who witnessed what happened. Keep copies of any incident reports filed with the MTA, and make sure you follow through with all your medical treatment and keep detailed records of every appointment, prescription, and expense.
Document everything related to your injuries and how they've affected your life. Medical records, prescription receipts, proof of lost wages, photographs of your injuries as they heal, these all become evidence if your case goes to trial. The more thorough your documentation, the stronger your case will be.
Injured in a New York Train Accident?
Reach out to the Porter Law Group for a free, no-obligation consultation.
Summing It Up
Suing the MTA after a subway or train accident is absolutely possible, but it requires navigating a system designed to be much more restrictive than standard personal injury litigation. The 90-day notice of claim requirement is unforgiving, and missing it can end your case before it starts regardless of how strong your evidence of negligence might be.
The MTA owes passengers a duty of reasonable care, and when they breach that duty through negligent operation, poor maintenance, or dangerous conditions they knew about or should have discovered, injured passengers have the right to seek compensation. But exercising that right requires moving quickly, following the correct procedures exactly, and building a case that proves both negligence and damages.
If you or someone you care about has been hurt in a subway or train accident, the most important thing you can do is get experienced legal advice immediately. The clock is already ticking, and every day that passes is one day closer to that 90-day deadline. These cases are too complex and the stakes are too high to handle alone or to put off until later. Your rights and your ability to recover compensation for your injuries depend on taking action now.
