NY Auto Tort Reform Passed: 90/180 Serious Injury Category Eliminated, 50% Fault Bar Enacted

Key Takeaways — Updated June 2026

• The reform passed. On May 27, 2026, Governor Hochul announced the enacted FY27 auto-insurance/tort-reform package. Final bill text: S9008-C / A10008-C, Part EE.
• The 90/180 serious-injury category is gone. Insurance Law §5102(d) no longer recognizes a non-permanent injury that prevents substantially all daily activities for 90 of 180 days as a qualifying serious injury. Plaintiffs must now qualify under fracture, dismemberment, significant disfigurement, permanent loss of use, permanent consequential limitation, significant limitation of use, loss of a fetus, or death.
• Fault now comes first. Insurance Law §5104(a) sequences trials: liability is decided first, serious injury second, damages third.
• A 50% / mostly-at-fault bar passed — but only for Article 51 motor-vehicle cases. New CPLR §1411(b) bars recovery in personal-injury actions subject to Insurance Law Article 51 if the claimant’s fault is greater than the defendant’s fault, or greater than the combined fault of the defendants. New York generally still uses pure comparative negligence outside this carveout.
• The joint-and-several change did not pass. Neither the broad CPLR §1601 rewrite nor the narrower repeal of CPLR §1602(6) (the motor-vehicle exception to Article 16) appeared in the final enacted text. CPLR §1602(6) remains in force — low-fault motor-vehicle defendants remain outside Article 16’s several-liability limitation, exactly as before. Reports that “joint-and-several reform passed” are wrong.
• A narrow $100,000 non-economic cap applies to specified at-fault bad actors. Insurance Law §5104(d) caps non-economic loss at $100,000 (other than death cases) for at-fault uninsured operators (except sub-30-day lapses), at-fault impaired drivers convicted of impairment, and at-fault felony / felony-flight operators convicted of such. This is not a universal cap on car accident damages.
• In effect now — the bright line is actions and proceedings commenced on or after May 26, 2026 (the chapter’s effective date; the Governor’s office announced the package May 27). That is not the same as “accidents occurring on or after.” Anyone with an unfiled claim from an earlier accident should get legal advice immediately, because the filing date — not the accident date — is what pulls a case under the new rules.
• DFS is already telling insurers to bake the savings into rate filings. At NYIA’s 2026 Annual Conference in Bolton Landing on May 28, DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow told carriers that reduced litigation and fraud costs must be projected into current rate filings now that the law is signed.

Originally published April 30, 2026 (as a pending-legislation analysis). Substantially rewritten and republished May 28, 2026, after the FY27 budget was enacted on May 27, 2026 and DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow addressed the insurance industry at the NYIA Annual Conference at The Sagamore in Bolton Landing on May 28. Updated June 3, 2026 to incorporate ATRA’s June 1 reaction, updated insurance-cost context, and the workers’ compensation IME exclusion list provision. Reviewed and corrected by Jason Tenenbaum on June 5, 2026. Corrected again per Jason Tenenbaum’s June 11, 2026 redline review: the joint-and-several change did not pass in any form — this article previously described a repeal of CPLR §1602(6) and a Part FF amendment to Insurance Law §5106(a) no-fault denial timing; both descriptions have been removed. Updated June 13, 2026 to pin the effective date precisely — the reforms apply to actions and proceedings commenced on or after May 26, 2026 (the chapter’s effective date), distinct from the Governor’s May 27 announcement. The previous URL — /2026/04/hochul-tort-reform-50-percent-bar-joint-and-several-new-york-2026/ — 301-redirects to this canonical URL.

Governor Kathy Hochul’s auto-insurance tort-reform package is no longer hypothetical. On May 27, 2026, the Governor’s office announced the enacted FY27 reforms, and the final S9008-C / A10008-C, Part EE bill text is now law. The version that passed is not the version that was being discussed earlier in session — and that nuance matters. Some changes are sweeping. Some that were rumored to be central never made it into the final text. Reports that simply say “tort reform passed” or “joint-and-several reform passed” are oversimplified to the point of being misleading.

This guide is the practitioner-level read of what actually changed for a Long Island car accident case. I represent both injured plaintiffs and insurance defendants in New York courts every week, so this analysis is written from both sides of the table. For Long Island accident victims, the 90/180 deletion is the immediate injury-threshold shock. The new 50% bar is real, but only in a carefully drawn carveout — it does not blow up pure comparative negligence in every New York negligence case. And the much-discussed joint-and-several change did not pass — deep-pocket recovery rules are unchanged.

I represent both injured plaintiffs and insurance defendants in New York courts every week. I see these reforms from both angles.

June 2026 Update: ATRA, the Numbers Behind the Reform, and What Comes Next

On June 1, 2026 — five days after the bill was signed — the American Tort Reform Association released a statement calling the Hochul package “some of the most significant legal reforms in the Empire State in more than 20 years.” ATRA’s VP and Counsel for Civil Justice Policy Lauren Sheets Jarrell said: “New York has one of the most notoriously abused legal systems in the nation and these measures finally strike at the rampant scams, systemic fraud, and excessive litigation that have driven auto insurance costs sky-high for families struggling to make ends meet.”

That framing lands harder when you look at the numbers ATRA cites:

• New York drivers pay approximately $4,000 per year in auto insurance premiums — nearly $1,500 above the national average.
• Trial lawyer advertising in the state surged to $179 million in 2025 — an 84% increase since 2023. Out of 1.2 million local legal services ads broadcast in 2025, 78% promoted personal injury attorneys, with nearly 300,000 ads specifically targeting motor vehicle and construction site accidents.
• New Yorkers pay the second-highest “tort tax” in the nation at $2,684 per person annually — up 43% since 2022.
• New York City ranked the #2 Judicial Hellhole® in ATRA’s most recent annual report, with the state’s legislature earning the “Lawsuit Inferno” designation two years running. ATRA will release its 2026 Legislative HeatCheck in late July.

ATRA highlighted two provisions that deserve more attention than they’ve received in press coverage so far:

The staged-accident criminal expansion. The budget extends criminal RICO-style liability for staged accident schemes beyond just the driver at the wheel — anyone who hires, requests, encourages, orchestrates, or invites another person to stage a motor vehicle accident now faces felony-level fraudulent insurance act exposure. For the no-fault defense bar, this is the complement to the civil RICO injunction toolbox — it gives prosecutors a reach they didn’t have before.

The workers’ comp IME exclusion list. A provision ATRA flagged but most coverage missed: healthcare providers with a history of misconduct are now barred from providing care or performing independent medical examinations in workers’ compensation claims via a new “exclusion list” of ineligible providers. This is a direct shot at the revolving-door problem in the IME industry, where providers with regulatory histories continue to generate IME reports that carriers rely on to deny claims.

“These changes improve the legal environment for those who follow the law and create accountability and transparency for unscrupulous billboard attorneys who have exploited hardworking New Yorkers for too long.”

— Lauren Sheets Jarrell, VP & Counsel for Civil Justice Policy, American Tort Reform Association (June 1, 2026)

One measured note on ATRA’s Florida comparison, which the Governor’s office and ATRA both lean on: Florida’s 2023 HB 837 package was broader — it included a 50% bar for all negligence cases (not just motor vehicle), a shortened two-year statute of limitations, and bad-faith procedural changes. The 5.6% average rate reduction and the $1 billion returned to policyholders in 2025 reflect a larger reform package than what New York enacted. Whether New York’s narrower carveout (Article 51 motor-vehicle cases only) produces comparable savings is genuinely unknown — and DFS’s rate-filing oversight is the mechanism that will determine the answer.

From the Long Island practitioner’s view: the 90/180 deletion and the IME exclusion list are the two provisions most likely to show up in my caseload within 90 days. The 50% bar will get more headlines, but the 90/180 deletion affects the threshold calculus in every soft-tissue case filed after the effective date, and the IME exclusion list directly affects the evidentiary landscape in workers’ comp proceedings. Call (516) 750-0595 if you want to discuss how these changes apply to a specific pending matter.

What the Governor’s Press Release Said vs. What the Statute Actually Says

The press release announcing the reform is essential reading because it frames how the law will be politically defended over the next two years. But it is not the statute. Reading the Governor’s May 27, 2026 announcement alongside the final Part EE bill text reveals where the political framing and the statutory mechanics diverge — and where reporters and lawyers should be careful.

What the Governor said

In her May 27 announcement, Governor Hochul framed the package as consumer-affordability legislation. She said New Yorkers pay “some of the highest car insurance rates in the nation” — an average of roughly $4,000 annually, nearly $1,500 above the national average — and attributed the rates to “outdated laws, special interest loopholes and jackpot insurance payouts to bad actors.” She added:

“These hardfought reforms are a win for every New Yorker who depends on a car to go to work or drop their kids at school… I’ve heard from farmers who say these reforms will lower the cost of getting their goods to market and from construction supply companies who say this will lower the cost of building. This is how we are delivering on the promise to tackle the affordability crisis head on.”

— Governor Kathy Hochul, May 27, 2026 statement

State Senator Jamaal T. Bailey, the Senate sponsor, called the reforms “fairness, relief and financial stability that working families deserve and have needed for far too long.” Assemblymember David Weprin emphasized that the bill “maintain[s] important safeguards to ensure that innocent New Yorkers who are legitimately injured can still access the coverage and compensation they deserve.”

The Governor’s office also cited Florida’s 2023 HB 837 tort reform package as the supporting data point. According to the press release, Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation found a 5.6% average auto-insurance rate decrease across most of its market after reform, and Florida’s largest carrier returned “nearly $1 billion in excess profits to 2.7 million policyholders” in 2025. The Governor’s office framed New York’s reforms as designed to replicate that trajectory.

What the statute actually says

Here is the same package described in the language of the bill rather than the press release:

The press release says	The statute actually does
”Tightening the serious injury threshold… damages for pain and suffering or emotional distress are reserved for those able to objectively demonstrate that they have suffered a serious injury.”	Deletes the 90/180 category from Insurance Law §5102(d). Eight categories remain (death, dismemberment, significant disfigurement, fracture, loss of a fetus, permanent loss of use, permanent consequential limitation, significant limitation of use). The change is the removal of a category, not a tightening of every category.
”Limiting damages for individuals engaging in unlawful behavior at the time of an accident… ensure drivers flouting the law… don’t walk away with a jackpot payday.”	Adds Insurance Law §5104(d), a non-economic damages cap of $100,000 in serious-injury actions, other than death cases, for three categories of at-fault drivers: (1) operators of uninsured vehicles they were responsible for insuring (except sub-30-day lapses); (2) operators impaired at the time of the accident and convicted of impaired operation; (3) operators committing a felony or in flight from one and convicted. Economic damages remain uncapped.
”[P]rovisions that enable prosecutors to seek criminal penalties against any individual responsible for organizing a staged accident, not just the particular individual behind the wheel.”	This is a criminal-enforcement change in the broader budget, not part of the Part EE civil tort mechanics analyzed here. It expands who can be charged for organized/staged-accident insurance fraud beyond the driver to the organizers behind the scheme. It does not change a legitimately injured claimant’s tort rights, but it is the fraud-enforcement backbone the affordability argument leans on.
”Limiting damages for individuals who are ‘mostly’ at fault… puts New York in line with most other states.”	Adds CPLR §1411(b): in personal-injury actions subject to Insurance Law Article 51, recovery is barred if claimant fault is greater than the defendant’s or the combined defendants’ fault. This is an Article 51 motor-vehicle carveout, not a wholesale replacement of pure comparative negligence in CPLR §1411. New York remains a pure-comparative state for premises, products, dog bites, construction, and other negligence categories.
”Applying stringent oversight on insurance companies rates, preventing excess profits, and returning savings to consumers.”	The tort reform itself does not directly require rate reductions or refunds. The savings depend on DFS rate-filing review and any excess-profit / refund mechanisms in the broader package, applied through filings under Insurance Law §2305 and related rules. At the NYIA Annual Conference in Bolton Landing on May 28, DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow told insurers that reduced litigation and fraud costs must be projected into current rate filings now that the law is signed. (Full analysis →)
“Ensuring fair rates for drivers… prohibiting insurance companies from setting rates based on extraneous, personal factors like homeownership status, occupation, education level or zip code.”	The rating-factor restriction is a regulatory change separate from the Part EE tort reform analyzed in this article. It travels with the broader auto-insurance package but is mechanically distinct from the serious-injury threshold, fault-bar, cap, and Article 16 changes covered here.
”[T]hese reforms… result in significant savings for New York consumers and businesses.”	Whether savings materialize will be measured by DFS rate filings, refund mechanisms, and complaint data over the next 24 months. The statute creates the inputs to reduced claim severity; it does not by itself require carriers to pass those savings through. That distinction is the entire accountability story of this reform.
Cites Florida’s 5.6% rate reduction and ~$1B in returned profits as the supporting comparison.	Florida’s HB 837 made several changes simultaneously, including a general-negligence 50% bar (broader than New York’s Article 51-only carveout), a shortened statute of limitations (two years), bad-faith claim procedural changes, and joint-and-several adjustments. Reasonable people disagree on which Florida changes drove which outcomes. The Florida data is suggestive, not predictive.

The bottom line of the comparison

The press release and the statute do not contradict each other. They describe the same set of reforms in different registers — one political, one legal. The reader’s task is to keep both in view at once:

• The political register is what the Governor’s office will say the reform did, what carriers will repeat in defense of rate filings, and what the legislature will point to when constituents ask about premiums.
• The legal register is what the statute actually requires courts to do at threshold motions, jury instructions, and allocation-of-fault verdict forms.

This article is the legal register, written by a lawyer who appears in motor-vehicle cases on both sides every week. The political register is best read directly: the Governor’s May 27 announcement is short, public, and worth bookmarking alongside this piece.

“It affects us on both sides of the business. That’s what’s beautiful about it. It makes defense cases more defensible. It makes plaintiff cases more difficult.”

— Jason Tenenbaum, on the dual-sided practitioner view of the reform package

What Actually Passed in New York’s 2026 Auto Tort Reform

There are four enacted changes inside Part EE of the FY27 budget bill (S9008-C / A10008-C) — plus one widely reported change that did not pass. Take them one at a time. The terminology matters more than ever, because press-release framing has already blurred the distinctions.

1. The 90/180 serious-injury category is gone

Before the reform, Insurance Law §5102(d) listed nine categories that could establish “serious injury” — the threshold a plaintiff has to clear to recover non-economic damages in a New York motor-vehicle case. One of those categories was the so-called 90/180 rule: a medically determined injury of a non-permanent nature that prevented the injured person from performing substantially all of the material acts that constitute their usual and customary daily activities for at least 90 days during the 180 days immediately following the occurrence.

Part EE §1 deletes that category. The remaining categories survive: death, dismemberment, significant disfigurement, fracture, loss of a fetus, permanent loss of use of a body organ/member/function/system, permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member, and significant limitation of use of a body function or system.

Why this matters in practice: the 90/180 category was the relief valve for serious-but-not-permanent injuries — disc herniations that resolved with treatment, post-surgical recovery, prolonged functional impairment from soft-tissue injuries, complex regional pain syndrome that did not yet have a permanency narrative. Many honest, well-documented cases used that pathway. Defense lawyers will now use the deletion immediately in threshold summary-judgment motions. The 50% bar is louder; the 90/180 deletion will affect more ordinary cases.

One thing the reform does not change is how a threshold summary-judgment motion is litigated. The defense still moves first and still has to meet its own initial burden before the plaintiff has to show anything — and when it doesn’t, the motion fails. For a recent example, see our case note on a serious-injury threshold reversal in the Second Department, where a dismissed motor-vehicle injury case was reinstated because the defense never carried that burden. (That case was commenced before the reform, so it was decided under the prior §5102(d) framework — including the 90/180 category — which is how every case already in the pipeline will be evaluated.)

2. Fault now comes first under Insurance Law §5104

Part EE §2 amends Insurance Law §5104(a) and adds a new §5104(d). The §5104(a) amendment requires the trier of fact in an action to recover non-economic loss under Article 51 to determine fault first, then serious injury, then damages. No liability for non-economic loss is fixed unless and until the trier of fact determines that the plaintiff sustained a serious injury.

That sequencing change does two things. First, it gives defense counsel a clean path to win cases on liability before damages evidence carries emotional weight at trial. Second, it requires plaintiffs to front-load liability proof — dashcam, intersection cameras, 911 audio, police bodycam, black-box / EDR data, rideshare telemetry, and witness identification work — to a degree the old framework did not require as early in the case.

3. The 50% bar passed — but only for Article 51 motor-vehicle PI actions

Part EE §3 adds a new subsection to CPLR §1411. The new rule says that in any action to recover damages for personal injury subject to Insurance Law Article 51 (New York’s no-fault motor-vehicle regime), recovery is barred if the claimant’s culpable conduct is:

• greater than the culpable conduct of the person against whom recovery is sought, or
• greater than the combined culpable conduct of the persons against whom recovery is sought.

This is a carveout, not a repeal. Pure comparative negligence under CPLR §1411 still operates outside Article 51 — premises cases, dog bites, defective product cases, construction cases, and most other negligence actions are unaffected by the new bar. The carveout is the no-fault motor-vehicle world.

Two precision points worth saying out loud:

• The statutory language is “greater than.” That is not the same as “50% or more.” Exactly 50/50 is not, by the text of the statute, the bar. The danger line is being more at fault, not equal.
• The bar applies when claimant fault exceeds either a single defendant’s fault or combined defendants’ fault. In multi-defendant cases this is meaningful: a plaintiff at 40% with two defendants at 30% each is below the combined 60% and recovers; a plaintiff at 55% with two defendants at 30% and 15% is barred.

Florida amended its general comparative-negligence statute this way in March 2023 (HB 837). New Jersey has long operated under a similar rule. Roughly 35 states are now in this camp. New York’s version is narrower — confined to Article 51 motor-vehicle actions — but inside that bucket it is real.

4. The $100,000 non-economic cap for specified at-fault bad actors

New Insurance Law §5104(d) caps non-economic loss at $100,000 in serious-injury actions, other than death cases, where the injured person is at fault, is not barred by CPLR §1411, and was:

1. operating an uninsured motor vehicle while responsible under VTL Article 6 for insuring it, except a coverage lapse of less than 30 days at the time of the accident;
2. operating while impaired at the time of the accident and convicted of such impaired operation; or
3. operating a motor vehicle in the commission of a felony or in immediate flight from one and convicted of that felony.

Read carefully: this is a non-economic cap, not a damages cap. Economic damages — medical bills, lost wages, future earning capacity, future medicals — are not capped. Death cases are excluded. The cap depends on conviction for the impairment / felony categories, not just allegation. And the at-fault person also has to not already be barred by CPLR §1411. This is a narrow rule aimed at specific categories, not a universal restriction on every plaintiff.

5. The joint-and-several change did not pass

The joint-and-several change did not pass. Neither version of it — the broad rewrite of CPLR §1601 that was rumored early in session, nor the narrower repeal of CPLR §1602(6) (the motor-vehicle exception to Article 16) that was discussed as the compromise — appears in the final enacted text. This is the part of the reform that has been most miscovered in the press, including by sources that should know better — and, in an earlier version, by this article.

What that means as a matter of current law: nothing changed. §1601 still says that a defendant 50% or less at fault generally pays only its proportional share of non-economic damages — but §1602(6), the motor-vehicle exception, remains in force and continues to pull motor-vehicle defendants out of §1601’s protection. A 10%-at-fault rideshare driver with the deep-pocket policy can still be held jointly and severally liable for the entire judgment, exactly as before May 27, 2026.

If you are reading coverage that says “joint-and-several reform passed,” it is wrong. Read the bill text — and see our companion piece, Two Weeks Later: What Coverage of New York’s Tort Reform Still Gets Wrong, for the full record of what passed and what didn’t.

Effective date language matters

Part EE §5 says the reforms take effect immediately and apply to all actions and proceedings commenced on or after such effective date. That is meaningful and a little dangerous.

“Commenced on or after” is not the same as “accidents occurring on or after.” Read literally, an unfiled claim from a 2024 or early-2026 accident may be subject to the new rules if the lawsuit is not filed until after May 27, 2026. There will be retroactivity and due-process challenges. There will be litigation over whether courts read the statute as a procedural rule (applies to all new filings) or a substantive rule (applies only to accidents post-effective-date). Anyone sitting on an unfiled case should talk to counsel immediately.

How the 50% Bar Actually Changes Liability Intake

The Article 51 mostly-at-fault bar is a regime change, but its real-world impact is narrower than the political rhetoric suggests. In my practice, here is what actually shifts now that the new CPLR §1411(b) is law:

“The 50% bar changes the liability cases. The 90/180 deletion changes the injury cases. That’s the part every plaintiff lawyer needs to wake up to.”

— Jason Tenenbaum

The cases that go away

There are categories of car accident claims I have historically taken knowing the liability split was going to be 50/50, 55/45, or even 60/40 — cases where the plaintiff would recover something even with an ugly percentage. Under the new mostly-at-fault rule, those cases are no longer viable for the plaintiff if claimant fault exceeds the defendants’ fault:

• Sideswipe collisions where both vehicles were changing lanes. Without dashcam footage or a clear non-self-serving witness, these often resolve at 50/50 — and a plaintiff who drifts even 1% over is now barred.
• Sudden-stop / rear-end cases where the rear vehicle has a sudden-stop or brake-checking defense. Pure rear-end cases stay viable. The marginal cases — where the trailing driver argues the front driver brake-checked or stopped without cause — frequently end up in the 45/55 zone.
• Lane-change disputes. Two drivers entering the same lane at the same moment, neither with clean witness testimony, often shake out 50/50 in arbitration or summary judgment.
• Some intersection collisions with mutual right-of-way disputes (yellow-light gambles, ambiguous stop-sign sequencing).

“If there’s a rear-end collision and you represent the rear-render, you’re probably never going to take that case. Even if you can show a sudden stop, your odds of getting more than 50% on the other party are slim. Sideswipes — same thing. You probably don’t want to take a sideswipe anymore. You’d need photographic evidence, not just he-said-she-said.”

— Jason Tenenbaum, on which case types come off the plaintiff intake list

The clearer cases stay viable. The rear-end case where the trailing driver had time to stop, the left-turn-into-oncoming-traffic case where my client was lawfully proceeding — those are still 80/20 or 90/10 cases, and they remain firmly recoverable. What goes away is the marginal disputed-fault case — and that is, in fairness to the reform’s proponents, one of the points.

The non-motor-vehicle cases stay on the old rule. CPLR §1411(b) is only an Article 51 carveout. If you slip and fall at a Long Island Stop & Shop and you’re 60% at fault for not watching where you were walking, pure comparative negligence still applies — you recover, reduced. This article’s analysis is about car accident cases.

The settlement leverage shift

What plaintiff’s lawyers don’t always say out loud: the 50% bar gives defendants leverage to offer less in settlement, because the defendant can point to the cliff. Pre-reform, a defendant facing a likely 60/40 plaintiff verdict would settle reasonably because they were going to pay something. Post-reform, the same defendant can credibly threaten to take the case to verdict and roll the dice on the 50% line. That changes how cases are valued at the table.

That said: insurance carriers also know that a jury occasionally surprises everyone. A defendant who sincerely thinks the case is 51% on the plaintiff might still settle rather than risk a 49% jury determination that delivers a full verdict. The leverage shift is real, but it’s not absolute.

Why cameras may moot most of this in five years

The single biggest factor underwriting the 50% bar’s plaintiff impact is evidentiary uncertainty. Sideswipes and lane-change cases settle 50/50 because nobody can prove what actually happened. That’s already changing rapidly.

A current Tesla has eight cameras that record continuously. A modern dashcam is $80. Every passenger commercial vehicle (Uber, Lyft, MTA bus, school bus, FedEx truck, Amazon delivery van) has at least one forward-facing camera, and most have multiple. Major intersections in Nassau and Suffolk County are being instrumented with municipal traffic cameras. Companies like Nexar sell aggregated dashcam footage from their fleet of cars to litigants.

Once the typical car accident has video coverage, the 50% bar becomes much less consequential — because nobody is settling 50/50 anymore. Liability is what the video shows. The reform is real today; in five to ten years, evidence technology may be eating most of its bite.

“As more cars have cameras on them, this whole 50% bar lessens in importance. Once that evidence comes out, it’s indisputable. Tesla’s already got eight cameras on every car. They could pass a law tomorrow saying you can’t drive without a camera.”

— Jason Tenenbaum, on why the 50% bar may quietly self-resolve over the next decade

The Joint-and-Several Change Did Not Pass — The Innocent Passenger Is Still Protected

The single most-mischaracterized piece of this reform cycle is the joint-and-several change — because it did not pass, and much of the coverage (including, in an earlier version, this article) reported that it did. Neither the broad CPLR §1601 rewrite nor the narrower repeal of CPLR §1602(6) appears in the final enacted text. The motor-vehicle exception to Article 16 remains on the books. Low-fault motor-vehicle defendants remain jointly and severally liable, exactly as before.

While the proposal was pending, Jason flagged it as the change that worried him most:

“The 50% bar gets the headlines. But the joint-and-several change is the one that really gets my attention. The innocent passenger has never done anything wrong — he’s just sitting in the back seat minding his own business. That’s the case that gets hurt the most.”

— Jason Tenenbaum, on the joint-and-several proposal while it was pending

That concern is why the outcome matters so much. Here is the case the proposal would have changed — and didn’t.

The innocent passenger scenario — and why current law still protects her

Imagine a Long Island passenger in an Uber or Lyft. The rideshare driver picks her up, drops off another passenger, and pulls away from a stop sign. The driver glances both ways, edges out — and gets T-boned by a driver in the cross street running a stop sign. Liability is split: the cross-traffic driver is 90% at fault; the rideshare driver is 10% at fault.

Suppose the jury awards $1,000,000. The cross-traffic defendant carries the New York minimum 25/50 liability policy. The rideshare driver carries the TLC-required $1.25M commercial policy.

Under current law — which the 2026 reform did not change:

• Cross-traffic defendant: $25,000 paid (policy limits).
• Rideshare driver: jointly and severally liable for the entire remaining $975,000, because CPLR §1602(6) — the motor-vehicle exception — keeps Article 16’s several-liability limitation out of motor-vehicle cases.
• The innocent passenger collects roughly the full $1,000,000 (limited only by total available coverage).

Under the proposal that did not pass, the 10%-at-fault rideshare defendant would have been able to invoke Article 16 and limit its non-economic exposure to its proportional share — cutting the innocent passenger’s practical recovery dramatically. That cut did not happen. Deep-pocket recovery for innocent passengers, pedestrians, and multi-vehicle plaintiffs is unchanged.

Whether Albany revisits joint-and-several reform in a future session is an open question — earlier proposals have a way of coming back. We will update this analysis if it does. For now, the rule is simple: the joint-and-several law you knew before May 27, 2026 is still the law.

The 90/180 Elimination Is the Sleeper Change

If you only read one section of this article, read this one.

The 50% bar gets the political oxygen and the press headlines because it is easy to understand. “Mostly at fault, you lose.” Pundits and reporters can write that story in their sleep. But the change that will affect the largest number of ordinary Long Island accident victims is the deletion of the 90/180 serious-injury category from Insurance Law §5102(d).

Here is why. Most injured New Yorkers are not in dramatic, headline-grade cases. They are in rear-end collisions, sideswipes, intersection T-bones, rideshare crashes, delivery-vehicle crashes, and multi-car chain collisions. Their injuries — herniated discs, post-surgical recoveries, complex regional pain syndrome that has not yet fully crystallized, prolonged soft-tissue impairment — frequently disrupt work, sleep, childcare, and commuting for many months without yet meeting a clean “permanent” injury label early in the case. Under the old rule, a well-documented 90/180 claim gave those people a path to pain-and-suffering recovery while their treating doctors built out the permanency record. Under the new law, that path is gone.

The defense bar will use the deletion in summary-judgment motions on threshold within months. The plaintiff bar has to respond accordingly. In practical terms that means:

• Objective testing matters more than ever. MRI, EMG, ROM measurements with goniometer documentation, orthopedic and neurology examinations, and serial imaging correlation are no longer documentation upgrades — they are the case.
• Gaps in treatment will be weaponized. A six-week gap because of childcare or insurance authorization is now significantly harder to explain away in a threshold motion.
• Permanency narratives need to be set up earlier in the file. Treating physicians need to be deposed (or affidavits prepared) on permanency or significant-limitation grounds, not on 90/180 functional restriction.
• Soft-tissue cases without imaging will be much harder to defend on threshold. That does not mean they cannot win — it means they need a different evidentiary backbone.

Many real, deserving plaintiffs are going to lose threshold motions in 2026 and 2027 because their intake and medical documentation was built around the 90/180 framework. Plaintiff firms that do not adapt their intake protocols immediately will see a noticeable hit to case viability.

DFS Just Told Insurers What This Really Means

The day after the auto tort reform package was announced, DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow addressed the insurance industry at the New York Insurance Association’s 2026 Annual Conference at The Sagamore Resort in Bolton Landing. The Law Office of Jason Tenenbaum was in the room. The remarks are worth reading carefully because they show how DFS expects insurers to operationalize the new statute.

Two quotes deserve to be read alongside the bill text:

“Ideally, litigation and fraud costs [are] coming down. So that component of claims will come down and we need to project that. We need to incorporate that now as it’s signed into law.”

— DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow, remarks to NYIA Annual Conference, Bolton Landing, May 28, 2026

“We will put out detailed guidance on how we expect that projection of reduced claims in litigation and fraud [to] come in current filings.”

— DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow, on rate-filing expectations after the reform

That is the accountability hook for the whole package. Hochul’s office sold this reform publicly as consumer affordability — lower premiums for New Yorkers, fraud control, savings returned to drivers. DFS is telling the industry that projected reductions in litigation and fraud costs have to be incorporated into current rate filings now that the law is signed. If insurers are about to enjoy lower claim severity (narrower threshold and the mostly-at-fault bar), the regulator’s framing is that those savings should be passing through.

We will be watching DFS rate filings and any guidance documents closely. The full news analysis of the NYIA remarks is here: DFS Told Insurers What NY Auto Tort Reform Really Means.

The $100,000 Non-Economic Cap for Specified Bad Actors

The new Insurance Law §5104(d) cap deserves its own treatment because press coverage has been muddled. To repeat: it is a $100,000 cap on non-economic loss, not a universal damages cap. It applies in serious-injury actions, other than death cases, only when an at-fault injured person is not already barred by CPLR §1411 and was:

1. operating an uninsured motor vehicle while responsible under VTL Article 6 for insuring it — with an explicit carveout for coverage lapses of less than 30 days at the time of the accident;
2. operating while impaired at the time of the accident and convicted of such impaired operation; or
3. operating a motor vehicle in the commission of a felony or in immediate flight from one, and convicted of that felony.

Three precision points to embed in your case-analysis instincts:

• The cap is non-economic only. Medical bills, lost wages, future earning capacity, and future medical care are not capped.
• Categories two and three require an actual criminal conviction. Allegation does not trigger the cap.
• The cap applies only to plaintiffs who are themselves at fault. An innocent passenger injured in an uninsured vehicle is not subject to this cap.

This is a politically targeted carveout aimed at sympathetic cases for the press release (the drunk driver who hurt himself, the uninsured driver who caused the crash and survived, the fleeing felon who crashed). It is not a backdoor across-the-board cap on car accident pain-and-suffering damages.

What Long Island Car Accident Victims Should Do Differently After the Reform

For injured New Yorkers, the practical advice has changed. The pre-reform “talk to a lawyer eventually” approach is not safe anymore. Here is the post-reform checklist:

1. Get medical care immediately. Treatment gaps will be weaponized at threshold. The day you stop treating is the day the defense IME doctor starts building his report.
2. Get objective testing when indicated. MRI for radicular symptoms, EMG for nerve involvement, range-of-motion testing by a treating physician or physiatrist, orthopedic/neurology specialist exams. Objective findings drive every remaining serious-injury category now that the 90/180 functional pathway is gone.
3. Preserve liability evidence on day one. Dashcam video, intersection cameras, police bodycam, nearby business security cameras, 911 audio, witness names, black-box / EDR data, and rideshare telemetry are now front-of-case priorities under fault-first sequencing.
4. Do not assume “I was only partly at fault” is safe. Fault percentage can now end the case under the Article 51 mostly-at-fault bar. The conversation about percentage starts at the scene, not at the deposition.
5. Do not wait to file or evaluate. The effective-date language applies to actions and proceedings commenced on or after the effective date. Unfiled claims from earlier accidents need urgent legal review because retroactivity arguments may shape whether the case is governed by the old rule or the new one.
6. Keep a functional journal, but understand it no longer replaces objective serious-injury proof. The journal is corroboration. Imaging, ROM, specialist narratives, and medical record continuity are the proof.
7. Do not accept an insurance adjuster’s summary of the new law. The statute is technical. The difference between “equal fault” and “greater than” fault matters. The difference between economic and non-economic damages matters. The difference between conviction and allegation matters.

If you were injured in a New York car accident and are worried about how the new serious-injury and fault rules apply to your claim, call the Law Office of Jason Tenenbaum at (516) 750-0595 for a free consultation. These reforms make early investigation and medical documentation more important than ever.

How Florida’s 2023 Reform Played Out — A Useful Comparison

Florida is the closest jurisdiction with a fresh tort-reform regime. In March 2023 the Florida legislature passed HB 837 in a near-overnight session. The bill moved Florida from pure comparative negligence to a 50% bar, shortened the negligence statute of limitations from four years to two, modified bad-faith insurance claim procedures, and adjusted joint-and-several treatment.

What practitioners report from Florida three years in:

• Plaintiff filings dropped significantly in the months immediately after passage, then partially recovered as plaintiffs’ counsel adjusted case-selection criteria.
• Sideswipe and disputed-fault cases largely disappeared from active dockets. Marginal cases stopped being economically viable.
• Settlement values declined in the 30-65% fault range as defense counsel leveraged the cliff.
• Catastrophic-injury cases involving multi-defendant fault splits saw real reductions in recoverable damages, exactly as expected under joint-and-several reform.
• Insurance premiums did not meaningfully decline, despite that being a centerpiece of the reform’s political case.

New York has now joined the Florida pattern, but with important differences. Long Island’s litigation environment isn’t identical to South Florida — our jury pools are different, our no-fault system overlays the negligence regime in motor vehicle cases, and the serious injury threshold under Insurance Law §5102(d) already filters cases at the front end. New York’s 50% bar is also narrower than Florida’s — it lives only inside the Article 51 carveout, not as a general modification of negligence law. But the broad direction of the reform’s effects will be similar, and the most useful Florida data point is the premium-relief gap: HB 837 did not produce the consumer savings its proponents promised. That is why DFS’s NYIA framing — “incorporate reduced fraud and litigation costs into current filings” — matters so much in New York.

What This Means for Your Active or Pending Case

A few practical points for people who are already in a New York car accident case or thinking about one:

If your accident happened before the effective date but your case is unfiled, talk to a lawyer immediately

This is the single most important practical point in the article. Part EE §5 says the reforms take effect immediately and apply to actions and proceedings commenced on or after such effective date. Not “accidents occurring on or after.” Read literally, an unfiled case from a 2024 accident filed in June 2026 may be subject to the new rules — narrower threshold, fault-first sequencing, Article 51 mostly-at-fault bar, and Article 16 protection for low-fault motor-vehicle defendants.

There will be retroactivity and due-process litigation over how courts read this. We expect at least some courts to treat the procedural pieces (jury sequencing) as applicable to all new filings while construing the substantive changes (90/180 deletion, mostly-at-fault bar, Article 16 reach) more cautiously. Until that case law develops, anyone sitting on an unfiled claim should evaluate now whether filing before the issue is litigated reduces risk.

If your case is already filed and pending, the analysis is more favorable

Cases commenced before the effective date are not within the literal scope of Part EE §5. Defense counsel will still attempt to argue that procedural elements apply to all pending matters under the usual rule that procedural statutes generally apply to pending proceedings, but the substantive changes — threshold deletion, mostly-at-fault bar, Article 16 reach for non-economic damages — should be confined to actions commenced after the effective date. Talk to your attorney about whether any case-management decisions, summary judgment timing, or trial scheduling need to be re-evaluated in light of the reform.

If you are in an accident now, document everything aggressively

The value of documentary evidence in any disputed-fault case has never been higher. If you are in any sort of crash on Long Island today:

• Photograph the scene before vehicles are moved if it is safe to do so. Resting positions, damage patterns, road conditions, traffic signals, skid marks.
• Get witness contact information. Independent witnesses have outsized value under fault-first sequencing.
• Preserve dashcam footage immediately — most dashcams overwrite within hours or days.
• Pull rideshare and commercial-vehicle telemetry early. Uber, Lyft, Amazon, FedEx, and TLC-licensed for-hire vehicles all log telemetry that becomes harder to obtain weeks later.
• Call your attorney before talking to the other side’s adjuster. A recorded statement that includes a stray “I think I might have been a little late on the brakes” is exactly the kind of comparative-fault hook that now reaches the Article 51 bar.

Our Long Island car accident lawyer guide covers the disputed-fault scenarios in detail, and our standalone analysis of what to do when fault is disputed walks through evidence strategy step by step.

Case selection just got more disciplined

For prospective plaintiffs reading this: if you are worried a partial-fault situation may make your case harder under the new rules, the answer is the same as it has always been. Talk to a lawyer. The cases that survive the Article 51 mostly-at-fault bar are the ones with strong evidence supporting your version of events. Building that evidence record starts at the scene.

What’s Next: Scaffold Law Reform

With the auto tort package now law, the political momentum will almost certainly shift to Labor Law §240 — the Scaffold Law. The Scaffold Law’s strict-liability framework for gravity-related construction injuries has been the white whale of New York tort-reform advocates for decades. The argument that absolute liability inflates construction costs by hundreds of millions per year has been made every legislative session and beaten back every time.

This is a topic where I differ from much of the plaintiff’s bar. I represent injured construction workers and I understand the worker-safety logic of strict liability. But the Scaffold Law as written — full strict liability with the only available defense being sole proximate cause — is in tension with the way the rest of the negligence system now operates. With the new Article 51 mostly-at-fault bar in CPLR §1411(b), the inconsistency between modified-comparative negligence for car accidents and absolute liability for ladder falls becomes starker. Reform of §240 is the logical next agenda item, and I expect it to be the next significant tort-reform fight. Separately, the Child Victims Act 2026 update represents another active front of New York tort expansion that runs in the opposite policy direction from the auto tort package.

“Once they pass this, scaffold-law reform is going to be next. This is just the beginning. I am all for it. Construction projects in New York are outrageously expensive. People should not be paid for improperly climbing a ladder.”

— Jason Tenenbaum, on why the auto tort reform is a leading indicator for §240 reform

The Bottom Line

The 2026 auto tort reform package is a real change, but the parts that get the headlines (the 50% bar) are not the parts that will affect the largest number of New Yorkers. The 90/180 deletion is the sleeper change that will pull the threshold rug out from under many ordinary, well-documented soft-tissue and post-surgical cases. The Article 51 mostly-at-fault bar will reshape case selection in disputed-fault cases. The $100,000 bad-actor cap is narrow but real for the specified categories. And the joint-and-several change did not pass — deep-pocket recovery for innocent passengers and pedestrians is unchanged.

Sold publicly as premium relief. Explained to insurers — at NYIA, the morning after — as projections, filings, fraud assumptions, and litigation-cost components. The rights restrictions are immediate. The premium savings are the part New Yorkers will have to verify. We will be watching DFS rate filings closely and updating this analysis as enforcement guidance, court decisions, and rate orders come out.

For a free, confidential consultation about your Long Island car accident case, call (516) 750-0595 or contact the firm. Our Long Island personal injury practice handles motor-vehicle, premises, construction, and catastrophic-injury cases across Nassau County, Suffolk County, and the five boroughs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did New York pass tort reform in 2026?

Yes. On May 27, 2026, Governor Hochul announced auto-insurance/tort reforms as part of the FY27 Enacted Budget. The final law (S9008-C / A10008-C, Part EE) amends Insurance Law §§5102 and 5104 and amends CPLR §1411. It eliminates the 90/180 serious-injury category, changes jury sequencing to fault-first, adds a mostly-at-fault bar for Article 51 motor-vehicle personal-injury actions, and creates a narrow $100,000 non-economic damages cap for specified at-fault bad actors. The widely reported joint-and-several change did not pass.

Is New York still a pure comparative negligence state?

Mostly, but with a new motor-vehicle carveout. CPLR §1411 still preserves pure comparative negligence as the general rule. The 2026 reform adds a new subsection (b) for personal-injury actions subject to Insurance Law Article 51. In those cases, recovery is barred if the claimant’s culpable conduct is greater than the defendant’s or greater than the combined defendants’ fault. Outside the Article 51 carveout — premises liability, dog bites, product liability, construction cases — pure comparative negligence continues to apply.

Does being exactly 50% at fault bar recovery in a New York car accident case?

The enacted language bars recovery only when the claimant’s fault is greater than the fault of the defendant or combined defendants. That means 50/50 is not, by the text of the statute, barred. The danger line is being more at fault, not equal fault. We expect this to be litigated and tightened by appellate decisions over the next 18 months.

Did New York eliminate the 90/180 serious-injury category?

Yes. The final bill removes the Insurance Law §5102(d) category for a medically determined non-permanent injury that prevents substantially all customary daily activities for at least 90 of the first 180 days. Plaintiffs now have to qualify under the remaining categories: death, dismemberment, significant disfigurement, fracture, loss of a fetus, permanent loss of use of a body organ/member/function/system, permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member, or significant limitation of use of a body function or system.

Does the reform apply to accidents that happened before May 27, 2026?

Part EE §5 says the reforms take effect immediately and apply to actions and proceedings commenced on or after the effective date. That is not the same wording as “accidents occurring on or after.” Read literally, an unfiled claim from an earlier accident may be subject to the new rules if the lawsuit is not filed until after the effective date. Retroactivity and due-process challenges are likely. Anyone with an unfiled claim from an earlier accident should get legal advice immediately.

Did joint-and-several liability reform pass?

No. The joint-and-several change did not pass — in either the broad CPLR §1601-rewrite form or the narrower CPLR §1602(6)-repeal form discussed during the session. CPLR §1602(6), the motor-vehicle exception to Article 16, remains in force. Low-fault motor-vehicle defendants remain subject to joint-and-several liability exactly as before May 27, 2026. Reports that “joint-and-several reform passed” are incorrect.

What is the $100,000 cap in the new law?

The $100,000 cap in Insurance Law §5104(d) applies only to non-economic loss, only in specified cases. The injured person must be at fault, not already barred from recovery by CPLR §1411, and either operating an uninsured vehicle they were responsible for insuring (with a sub-30-day lapse carveout), operating while impaired and convicted of impaired operation, or operating during a felony or felony flight and convicted of that felony. Death cases are excluded. It is not a universal cap on car accident damages.

What did DFS say about the reform at the NYIA conference?

According to an in-room transcript reviewed by JTNY, DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow told insurers at the NYIA 2026 Annual Conference in Bolton Landing that reduced litigation and fraud costs must be projected into current rate filings now that the law is signed. DFS said it will issue detailed guidance on how it expects insurers to project reduced claim costs in filings. Full analysis: DFS Told Insurers What NY Auto Tort Reform Really Means.

Does the reform change no-fault insurance claim deadlines?

No. The Part EE tort reform does not change no-fault claim-handling deadlines. The 30-day pay-or-deny framework and the existing preclusion case law continue to apply. Our comprehensive no-fault insurance guide explains how no-fault claims interact with tort lawsuits.

How long do I have to file a lawsuit after a New York car accident?

Three years from the date of the accident under CPLR §214 for personal injury claims. Two years for wrongful death claims under EPTL §5-4.1 — note that the Wrongful Death Modernization Act is a parallel 2026 reform proposal that would expand eligible survivors and damages categories in these cases. Government-vehicle and roadway-defect claims require a Notice of Claim filed within 90 days under General Municipal Law §50-e. The statute-of-limitations periods are unchanged by the 2026 reform, but the “actions commenced on or after” effective-date language creates urgency to evaluate unfiled claims well before the limitations period runs.

Should I settle now or after the reform?

Settlement decisions should be based on the value of your case — your injuries, the available coverage, the strength of your evidence — not on speculation about how courts will interpret the reform’s effective-date language. That said: if your case is already filed and pending, the reform’s substantive changes likely do not apply to your case, and you should make sure your attorney is making that argument in any motion practice. If your case is unfiled, the calculus is different and depends on whether filing now or waiting carries more risk under the new statute.

About This Analysis

This article is written by Jason Tenenbaum, Esq., founder of the Law Office of Jason Tenenbaum, P.C. (Garden City, Long Island). The firm represents both injured plaintiffs and insurance defendants in New York motor-vehicle, premises, construction, and no-fault matters. Across his career, Jason has appeared in over 1,000 New York appeals, more than 100,000 no-fault cases, and recovered over $100 million for plaintiff clients. He is a regular speaker on no-fault insurance, serious-injury threshold, and motor-vehicle litigation, and an authorized legal commentator for Bloomberg Law and Law360-style expert-analysis publications.

This analysis was prepared by reviewing the final S9008-C / A10008-C bill text, the Governor’s May 27, 2026 press release, the in-room transcript of DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow’s May 28 remarks at the New York Insurance Association 2026 Annual Conference at The Sagamore Resort in Bolton Landing (where the author attended), and existing Court of Appeals and Appellate Division decisional law interpreting Insurance Law §5102(d), §5104, CPLR §1411, CPLR §1601–1602, and Article 51’s no-fault framework.

Methodology note: Comparisons to Florida’s HB 837 are based on the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation analyses cited in the Governor’s press release, supplemented by independent reporting on Florida tort filings and settlement values in 2023–2025. The methodology section is available on request to journalists, academics, and other reform analysts.

Press inquiries, expert-commentary requests, and on-background interviews: jason@jtnylaw.com or (516) 750-0595. The firm is happy to provide attributed quotes, recorded video commentary, and an annotated copy of the bill on request.

Primary Sources

The legal claims in this article are anchored to the following primary sources:

• S9008-C / A10008-C, Part EE (FY2027 Enacted Budget; tort reform): NY Senate bill page · NY Assembly bill page
• Governor Hochul’s May 27, 2026 announcement: “Governor Hochul Secures Reforms to Lower Auto Insurance Premiums for New Yorkers”
• Insurance Law §5102(d) (serious-injury threshold definitions): Statute text
• Insurance Law §5104 (negligence actions in motor-vehicle cases; sequencing and bad-actor cap): Statute text
• Insurance Law §5106 (no-fault claim payment / denial — unchanged by the 2026 reform): Statute text
• CPLR §1411 (comparative-fault statute; new Article 51 subsection (b)): Statute text
• CPLR §1601 and §1602 (Article 16 joint-and-several / several-liability mechanics — unchanged by the 2026 reform; §1602(6) remains in force): §1601 text · §1602 text
• NYIA 2026 Annual Conference: Conference page (event peg for DFS remarks; The Sagamore Resort, Bolton Landing, May 27–29, 2026)
• DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow remarks, May 28, 2026: see our in-room news analysis for direct quotes
• Florida HB 837 (2023) (closest reform comparison; cited in Governor’s press release): Bill text

Related Reading

• What New York’s 2026 auto tort reform means for insurers and claims professionals — the carrier-side companion to this analysis
• DFS told insurers what the reform really means (NYIA, Bolton Landing)
• Partial fault in New York car accidents — how comparative negligence works today
• What happens when fault is disputed in a New York car accident?
• Long Island car accident lawyer — practice page
• Long Island personal injury practice
• New York no-fault insurance law — comprehensive guide
• Long Island Uber & Lyft accident lawyer — rideshare passenger claims
• New York car accident minimum insurance coverage
• Settlement calculator — estimate your case value
• Child Victims Act New York 2026 — related tort reform context
• What to wear to court — the complete national guide for testifying litigants

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Editor’s note (May 28, 2026 — substantially rewritten): The original April 30, 2026 version of this post analyzed two pending Hochul tort-reform proposals. On May 27, 2026, the FY27 budget package was announced and the auto-insurance tort reforms became law as part of S9008-C / A10008-C, Part EE. This article has been rewritten end-to-end to reflect the enacted statute — the 90/180 deletion in Insurance Law §5102(d), fault-first sequencing in §5104(a), the Article 51 mostly-at-fault bar in new CPLR §1411(b), and the $100,000 non-economic cap for specified bad actors in new §5104(d). Correction (June 11, 2026, per Jason Tenenbaum’s review): earlier versions of this article described a repeal of CPLR §1602(6) and a Part FF no-fault denial-timing amendment to Insurance Law §5106(a); the joint-and-several change did not pass in any form and those descriptions have been removed. The companion news analysis of DFS Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow’s remarks to the insurance industry at the NYIA 2026 Annual Conference in Bolton Landing is published separately: DFS Told Insurers What NY Auto Tort Reform Really Means. We will continue to update this analysis as DFS guidance, rate filings, and court decisions interpret the new statute.