Hochul Tort Reform Tightens NY Injury Threshold

New York's auto injury litigation landscape is set for its biggest restructuring in decades after Governor Kathy Hochul announced a $268 billion state budget agreement on May 7, 2026 that includes a sweeping set of tort reforms targeting personal injury claims. The deal eliminates the 90/180 "serious injury" category under New York's no-fault law, narrows the definition of serious injury to objective medical standards, and shifts the state from pure comparative fault to a modified rule that bars non-economic damages for plaintiffs found more than 50% at fault.

The package marks a turning point in a long-running fight between Hochul, the insurance industry, and the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, which had argued the changes would shift costs onto injured drivers without lowering premiums. Final budget language was expected the week of May 11, 2026, although Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie called Hochul's announcement "premature" and disputed that all specifics had been finalized.

What the Budget Actually Changes

According to Insurance Journal's summary of the agreement, the budget adopts most of Hochul's auto tort proposals largely intact, while dropping at least one major provision and adding lawmaker amendments around insurance pricing. The clearest way to read the deal is to separate what survived negotiation from what got cut.

The 90/180 elimination is the change most likely to reshape day-to-day PI practice. Under Insurance Law §5102(d), the category let accident victims sue for pain and suffering when a non-permanent injury prevented them from performing "substantially all" daily activities for at least 90 of the 180 days after a crash — a workhorse pathway to non-economic damages that did not require permanent injury. With it gone, every claim must qualify under stricter categories: permanent loss of a body organ or member, permanent consequential limitation, significant limitation of use, fracture, dismemberment, or death.

The New Jury Sequencing Order

A less-discussed amendment to Insurance Law §5104(a) changes how juries are required to decide cases. Under the new rule, the trier of fact must determine fault before reaching the threshold question — and threshold before reaching damages. The order matters because the case can now end at any of three checkpoints.

Why Hochul Pushed This Now

The case for reform rested on hard numbers about what New Yorkers pay to drive. New York households paid an average of $1,935 for personal auto insurance in 2024, up from $1,753 in 2023, according to the Insurance Information Institute (Triple I). That works out to 2.23% of the state's median household income — well above the 1.59% national average — and ranks New York fourth in the country behind Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi.

Hochul has campaigned since January on a narrative that fraud and "runaway litigation costs" — not driver behavior — were the cause. Supporters included rideshare companies, insurance carriers, district attorneys, mayors, and Uber-backed Citizens for Affordable Rates (CAR), whose statewide survey reported 75% of New Yorkers called auto insurance a financial burden and 86% supported the legislation.

The plaintiff bar pushed back hard, framing the changes as a cost shift from insurers to crash victims rather than a fraud crackdown:

Trial lawyers argued that capping damages and tightening liability rules will not actually reduce premiums and will simply leave injured drivers undercompensated. With most of Hochul's tort package now in the budget, that argument shifts from the legislature to the courts and to the data on whether premiums actually drop.

What This Means for PI Firms

For New York personal injury practices, the elimination of 90/180 and the move to modified comparative fault are not minor tweaks — they reshape the economics of case selection, discovery, and trial strategy. Cases that used to clear the no-fault threshold on activity-of-daily-living evidence will now need objective medical proof from the outset.

Medical Records Become the Gating Asset

With the 90/180 category gone, the surviving "serious injury" categories all turn on objective medical proof. As Landman Corsi Ballaine & Ford notes, "investigating the true extent of an injury early in litigation will be even more critical should the amendment pass."

That means PI firms can no longer wait until summary judgment to confirm what's in the chart. Pre-accident records, MRI and CT imaging, orthopedic and neurology consults, physical therapy notes, and ongoing treatment records all become threshold evidence — not just damages evidence.

Case Intake Math Tightens

The shift to modified comparative fault changes case viability calculations at the door. Cases where the plaintiff's liability share is plausibly above 50% — left-turn collisions, lane changes, intersection disputes, premises cases with comparative negligence — now carry a binary outcome risk on pain and suffering. Firms will need to invest more in early liability investigation, including police reports, scene photographs, dashcam and surveillance footage, and the medical records that establish injury mechanism and timing.

Threshold Motions Will Multiply

Defense counsel will move earlier and harder on injury sufficiency. With the easier 90/180 path closed, more cases will turn on dueling medical experts and the completeness of the underlying record. Gaps — a missed treating provider, an unproduced imaging study, an unaccounted-for pre-existing condition — become opportunities for defense to challenge the threshold before damages are ever reached.

What to Watch Next

The budget framework still has to be translated into enabling legislation passed by the State Senate and Assembly. Three open questions will shape the practical impact for PI practices:

The Insurance Side of the Ledger

While the tort changes dominated trial-bar attention, the deal also includes provisions the insurance industry did not necessarily welcome. Prior Department of Financial Services approval is now required for any rate hikes, excess profit limits are designed to ensure savings from reform flow to consumers, and rating criteria around ZIP codes, education level, and occupation are now banned. Drivers who opt into telematics monitoring will receive mandatory discounts, and a separate provision will require drivers in New York City with 16 or more speed-camera violations in a year to install intelligent speed limiter devices.

The Bottom Line

The 2026 NY budget represents the most significant change to New York no-fault and tort practice since the original Insurance Law §5102 framework was written. For plaintiff personal injury firms, the elimination of the 90/180 category and the move to modified comparative fault raise the evidentiary bar at every stage — intake, threshold motion, settlement negotiation, and trial.

The firms best positioned to adapt will be those that can build complete medical narratives quickly: every provider identified, every record retrieved, every imaging study and specialist note in hand before the first threshold motion lands. The cases that used to survive on a treating physician's narrative will increasingly turn on whether the underlying chart actually proves it.

Sources: Insurance Journal — Budget Deal Announcement (May 7, 2026), Landman Corsi Ballaine & Ford — Litigation Impact Analysis, Insurance Journal — NY Premium Data via Triple I, Mondaq — NY Governor's Motor Vehicle Tort Reform Proposal, Bloomberg Law — Trial Lawyers Oppose Plan.

This article provides general information about New York tort reform developments and should not be construed as legal advice. Consult qualified counsel for advice specific to your matter.