New York’s Serious Injury Threshold (Insurance Law §5102(d)) Explained

New York’s No-Fault law was designed to keep smaller injury claims out of court. Your own insurance pays your medical bills and lost wages no matter who caused the crash, but in exchange you give up the right to sue for pain and suffering unless your injury is bad enough to clear a legal bar. That bar is the serious injury threshold, spelled out in Insurance Law §5102(d).

Whether your injury crosses that line often decides whether you have a lawsuit at all, which is why insurers fight so hard over it.

The eight categories under §5102(d)

An injury is “serious” if it fits one of these statutory categories:

• Death
• Dismemberment
• Significant disfigurement, such as a prominent scar
• Fracture of any bone
• Loss of a fetus
• Permanent loss of use of a body organ, member, function, or system
• Permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member
• Significant limitation of use of a body function or system
• Eliminated in May 2026: the former 90/180 injury category — a non-permanent injury that kept you from your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the 180 days right after the crash. It no longer applies to lawsuits filed on or after May 26, 2026.

The categories insurers fight over

Fractures and disfigurement are usually clear. The battles happen over the “limitation of use” categories, because they turn on medical proof and degree. Insurers routinely argue that a herniated disc or a soft-tissue injury doesn’t rise to “significant.” With the 90/180-day category gone, the limitation-of-use categories now carry even more of the load in soft-tissue cases.

What it takes to prove a serious injury

• Objective medical evidence, not just your own account of pain. Think MRI or CT findings, range-of-motion measurements, and nerve studies.
• A contemporaneous record showing you sought treatment soon after the crash and stayed with it. Gaps in treatment are the first thing the defense attacks.
• A doctor’s opinion connecting the injury to the accident and describing the limitation in measurable terms.

Why early medical care matters so much

The threshold is proven with records, and those records start the day you’re examined. A same-day visit, consistent follow-up, and honest reporting to your doctors build the objective proof the law demands. Toughing it out and skipping care is how strong cases get thrown out on the threshold.

If you’re not sure whether your injury qualifies, that’s exactly the kind of question we answer for free. Learn more about our personal injury practice and how these New York deadlines and thresholds fit together, then reach us through contact us.