Can New York Be Liable for a Parkway Crash Where There Was No Median Barrier?

A Patchogue family has told the State of New York that it intends to hold the State responsible for a fatal crossover crash on the Bethpage State Parkway. The claim is public, which makes it a fair occasion to explain what a claim against the State for a dangerous road has to contain and how fast it has to be filed.

The Bethpage story, as reported

On June 12, 2026, Jordan Nasir St. Fort Colin, 23, of Patchogue, was killed on the Bethpage State Parkway between Exits B1 and B2 when a vehicle crossed the median into oncoming traffic. News 12 reported the story on August 6, 2026.

The family alleges that the State was negligent in maintaining the roadway, that it had prior notice of similar crossover collisions on that stretch, and that it did not install a center or cable barrier. A petition drew more than 2,500 signatures. The parents filed a notice of claim seeking up to $50 million and plan a wrongful death suit. The article reports no response from the State.

Those are allegations in a pending claim, and I do not evaluate that family’s case here. What I can explain is the path every claim like it has to follow, with one reader on it: a Levittown woman, driving home from a night shift, hit in her own lane on a Nassau County state parkway by a car that came across the grass median. Her husband is reading this on a phone in a hospital waiting room, and the rest of this post is written for him.

The State can be sued, in the Court of Claims, on a 90-day clock

The State has waived its immunity on one condition. Court of Claims Act § 8 reads: “The state hereby waives its immunity from liability and action and hereby assumes liability and consents to have the same determined in accordance with the same rules of law as applied to actions in the supreme court against individuals or corporations, provided the claimant complies with the limitations of this article.”

Read the proviso. “The limitations of this article” are the deadlines in Court of Claims Act § 10. Court of Claims Act § 9(2) fixes the forum: claims against the state “for the torts of its officers or employees” are heard in the Court of Claims, not Supreme Court.

The injury clock is Court of Claims Act § 10(3). A claim for personal injuries caused by the negligence of a state officer or employee “shall be filed and served upon the attorney general within ninety days after the accrual of such claim, unless the claimant shall within such time serve upon the attorney general a written notice of intention to file a claim therefor, in which event the claim shall be filed and served upon the attorney general within two years after the accrual of such claim.”

Miss both, and the claim survives only by leave of the court. Court of Claims Act § 10(6) lets a late claimant apply “in the discretion of the court,” on motion, before a like claim against a citizen of the state would be barred under CPLR Article 2, on the six factors the chart quotes in its last row. In my experience that motion is argued on notice and prejudice, the second and fifth factors; the excuse for the delay rarely carries it.

Do not wait for the police reconstruction or for the State to answer anybody’s petition. Get the notice of intention served on the Attorney General before you know whether the case is good. The notice is not the case. It is the right to bring one, and it buys the two years it takes to make the State produce its own crash history. Miss it and you are asking a judge for permission to start, with the State arguing prejudice.

Wrongful death claims run on a different clock

An injury claimant’s 90 days run from the crash. A family’s do not. Under Court of Claims Act § 10(2), quoted in the chart above, the executor or administrator files the claim, or serves the notice of intention, within 90 days after the appointment, and in any event files the claim within two years after the death.

Consequently, a parent or spouse who has not been appointed cannot file.

Our wrongful death page covers who can be appointed and what the estate recovers. The appointment date is the one date here the family controls; therefore, petition the Surrogate’s Court for letters of administration in the first weeks, and serve the notice of intention within 90 days of the appointment.

What “the road was dangerous” has to mean in court

A missing barrier is not negligence by itself. The claimant proves two things and then answers a defense.

The first is notice. It is incumbent upon the claimant to show that the State knew, or was in a position to know, that this median was producing crossover crashes; the proof is the State’s own paper, listed below.

The second is the barrier itself. Whether a grass median of that width, at that traffic and speed, called for a cable or concrete barrier is an engineering question, proven through a qualified highway engineer’s opinion. I will not state a barrier standard here; the number belongs to the engineer who has measured the median.

The design-immunity defense

Under Weiss v Fote, 7 NY2d 579 (1960), and Friedman v State of New York, 67 NY2d 271 (1986), a governmental body that has studied a dangerous condition and adopted a reasoned plan is not liable for the plan unless the plan “evolved without adequate study or lacked reasonable basis.” Friedman goes further. The State has a continuing duty to review its plan in light of how the road actually operates, and an unjustified delay in implementing a remedial plan can itself be negligence. Under Turturro v City of New York, 28 NY3d 469 (2016), where the government never studied the danger at all, the immunity does not attach.

Consequently, the first document demand is for the study. If the State studied this median and reasonably decided against a barrier, the claim attacks the study or shows that later crashes triggered the duty to review; against a real study, the crash history is usually the argument that wins. A barrier decided on and then left unbuilt is a Friedman claim. A stretch nobody studied is Turturro. Which of the three a case is comes out of the State’s file; therefore, the request for it goes out in the first week.

Two defendants, two courts, and how fault gets split

The driver who crossed the median, or that driver’s estate and insurer, is the first defendant. The State is the second.

The claim against the driver is a negligence action in Supreme Court; four rules govern it.

In plain terms: the owner’s policy is in the case. Your medical bills and lost earnings come first from the no-fault coverage on the car you were in. Pain and suffering against the driver requires a serious injury, and a claimant more at fault than the driver recovers nothing from the driver. The last two rules are the 2026 changes and apply to the action against the driver only. Our serious-injury threshold guide explains each category.

CPLR Article 16 computes the State’s share. CPLR § 1601(1) applies “in a claim against the state”: when the State’s liability “is found to be fifty percent or less of the total liability assigned to all persons liable,” its liability for non-economic loss “shall not exceed that defendant’s equitable share.”

In practice, the State will point at the driver. The driver is not a party in the Court of Claims; however, the same subdivision counts a non-party’s culpable conduct unless the claimant proves that “with due diligence he or she was unable to obtain jurisdiction over such person” in a court of this state. A driver’s estate can usually be reached in Supreme Court; therefore, the driver’s share counts.

CPLR § 1602(6) takes the limit away from “any person held liable by reason of his use, operation, or ownership of a motor vehicle.” The crossing driver and the vehicle’s owner get no equitable-share protection. The 2026 budget did not repeal that subdivision; our tort-reform post explains what was left out.

Consequently, neither claim is dropped because the other defendant was at fault. The driver’s share can limit what the State owes for non-economic loss; nothing in Article 16 limits what the driver owes.

State road or county road: the question that decides the forum

Here, the road is a state parkway; therefore, the claim goes to the Court of Claims. State parkways and numbered state routes belong to the State, county routes to Nassau or Suffolk County, the rest to a town or village. Ask in writing and keep the answer: NYSDOT’s Long Island regional office, the county Department of Public Works, or the town or village highway department. For the Levittown driver, one letter to NYSDOT’s regional office settles it; the answer goes in the file before anything is served. The road types behind these cases are in Long Island’s most dangerous roads.

Getting the entity wrong is fatal on the clock because the notice does not transfer: a notice of claim served on Nassau County for a state road is not a notice of intention served on the Attorney General. Each statute’s late-filing provision is discretionary, and each names a factor the grid quotes. Neither promises relief.

Evidence that exists only if someone gets it now

These claims are won on records the claimant did not create, and the State holds most of them.

Start with NYSDOT’s crash records for the segment for the years before the crash (on the Bethpage stretch, the years before June 12, 2026); notice is proven or lost on them. Then a FOIL request to NYSDOT for complaints, traffic studies, barrier evaluations and work orders for the median; that answers whether the State studied the stretch, and when.

Photograph and measure the median now, from both directions, before the State changes it.

A petition signed after the crash is not notice to the State. Its value is in the names on it; some of the signers may have seen or reported earlier crossovers.

Then the crash itself: dashcam files, 911 audio, the police report, event data recorders, and witness names. Send preservation letters to the Attorney General, NYSDOT and the driver’s insurer. Those letters do not extend the 90 days.

The first 30 days, in order

Bring these to the first call:

• the police report number and your direction of travel;
• the insurance card for the car you were in;
• any photographs of the median, dated;
• if a family member died, the date of death and whether letters of administration have been sought.

Sources

• Court of Claims Act § 8, § 9, § 10
• CPLR § 1411, § 1601, § 1602
• General Municipal Law § 50-e, § 50-i
• Insurance Law § 5102, § 5103, § 5104
• Vehicle and Traffic Law § 388
• Weiss v Fote, 7 NY2d 579 (1960); Friedman v State of New York, 67 NY2d 271 (1986); Turturro v City of New York, 28 NY3d 469 (2016)
• News 12 Long Island, August 6, 2026