For more than 90 years the drunk driver lawyer at Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP have represented New Yorkers who have been severely injured or those who have lost family members due to a drunk driver accident in New York.
Often, many intoxicated drivers who caused the accident have inadequate insurance coverage. They cannot fully compensate those who went through life-altering injuries or those who have lost a loved one.
It would be an understatement to say that a drunk driving accident is a dangerous event. To put it simply, DUI drivers do not only put their lives at risk, but also the health, safety, and well-being of innocent individuals.
In New York, a drunk driving attorney must investigate the accident immediately to determine if others are also liable for the incident. For instance, the club or bar where the at-fault parties drank could be held responsible under the Dram Shop NYC law. An appropriate and thorough investigation of the club or bar is essential to the successful prosecution of the case.
The General Obligation Law of the Dram Shop Act 11-101(1) of New York states that individuals hit by intoxicated drivers may recover monetary compensation from the club, bar, and restaurants. Moreover, the person who caused the drunk driving crashes must be “visibly intoxicated” before being served with alcohol.
Furthermore, according to the Alcohol Beverage Control Law Section 65(2), selling, delivering, or serving alcoholic beverages to any “visibly intoxicated” individual is against the law.
An in-depth understanding of the laws surrounding a claim of a drunk driving accident is crucial for a successful recovery of monetary compensation. Our DUI accident attorneys have handled these claims in New York courts for decades, including claims against a business that unlawfully served a visibly intoxicated customer.
If you have been injured by a DUI driver in New York City and want to hold any contributing parties liable for their negligence, contact the NYC drunk driving accident attorneys at Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP today to explore your legal options. You may have recourse to seek compensation from the driver’s insurance company as well the drinking establishments’ responsibility for a drunk driver’s unlawful behavior.
If you are injured through the negligence of a DUI driver in New York, you can file a personal injury claim against the driver. If the driver is convicted of DUI, it can open the door to punitive damages that go beyond no-fault insurance.
In some cases, your legal options do not stop there. Under New York dram shop laws, any party unlawfully selling or assisting in the purchase of liquor may be held liable for any damages a person incurs when intoxicated. In other words, if you are injured by an intoxicated driver in the state of New York, you may have grounds to file a claim against the bar or the establishment where the driver was drinking – especially if the driver was underage or continuously served despite being visibly intoxicated.
New York state law dictates that both of these circumstances are illegal and expressly forbidden.
You may have a claim against the vendor if it can be established that the vendor:
To learn more about New York’s drunk driving laws on intoxicated driving, speak to a New York City drunk driving attorney now.
In a drunk driving accident, the liability of the establishment that served the alcohol is not always obvious. In many cases, it requires a concerted investigation to prove negligence and establish liability of the vendor under the law. This may involve locating and interviewing witnesses, as well as determining the blood alcohol level of the driver at the time of the accident.
At Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP, our New York City DUI lawyers have an in-depth understanding of dram shop law and know how to demonstrate negligence in court. We have the knowledge and resources to pursue any means to prove negligence in the eyes of the court and recover the damages you are seeking.
Although it’s technically true that a legally drunk driver (at the time of the accident) is almost always at fault, recovering financial compensation is rarely so simple.
In most cases, the car insurance of the DUI driver may not be enough to cover your injuries. Or the driver may not be insured at all, especially after committing DUI/DWI offenses multiple times.
Often, New York drivers purchase low-value car insurance policies to save money. And most of these car insurance policies provide no more than $25,000 per injured party.
Remember, drink and driving alone does not automatically give you the basis to file a personal injury lawsuit. This is true even if the police officer has charged the at-fault party with drunk driving.
To successfully recover compensation from a drunk driving crash, you must prove that the driver caused the accident that resulted in your injuries.
Generally, insurance companies fight back especially when a considerable insurance policy is at stake.
They might claim:
At Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP, we have experienced NYC drunk driving accident lawyer that can fight back against any defensive tactics used by insurance companies. Besides, we can identify if other parties might also be responsible for the accident, especially if the driver was under-insured or uninsured.
As with other states, driving with a 0.08% of blood alcohol content (BAC) or higher is illegal, for a good reason. According to 2018 drunk driving statistics by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), at least one intoxicated driver was involved in every 10,511 fatal motor vehicle accident.
Moreover, the report showed that there were more younger drivers involved in fatal drunk driving accidents than those in other age groups. Between 2003-2012, there were 3,752 people killed in New York due to drunk driving crashes.
In 2019, the law enforcement officials of New York began a program designed to help convince businesses to take steps to prevent intoxicated patrons to drive or to prevent them from being over-served.
Those who are Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) can be punished through the assessment of driving points, fines, and jail time, which may lead to the revocation of driver’s license. On other hand, those hurt by drunk driving accidents can file civil claims to collect damages from careless, negligent drivers.
NYC personal injury attorneys at Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP have successfully represented car accident victims all over the NYC area including the Queens and the Bronx. Schedule a FREE initial consultation today.
New York car accidents caused by intoxicated drivers have serious consequences for injured victims. Intoxicated while driving can result in serious and even drunk driving death that include:
At Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP, our personal injury lawyers in NYC have successfully won all types of cases involving wrongful death and catastrophic injuries. Also, they are intimately familiar with:
If you or a loved one has been involved in a DUI accident in New York, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our DUI car accident lawyers are ready to give your case the special attention it deserves.
If your injuries were caused by someone that was intoxicated while driving in New York, most personal injury lawsuits must generally be started within three years of the date of the crash. Miss that window and you generally lose the right to sue the at-fault parties at all.
Two things shorten it. If the crash results in a death, a wrongful death claim generally has to be started within two years of the date of death. And if a government body is a defendant, for example a city-owned or municipal vehicle or a public agency driver, a separate and much faster set of steps generally applies. Against many city and local government defendants you generally have to serve a written notice of claim inside 90 days; some public entities run short procedures of their own instead, and which set of steps applies depends on the defendant. Where those procedures apply, the lawsuit itself generally has to be filed well before the standard three years would run, and by how much varies with the entity. The notice step is not a formality. Miss it and the claim against that defendant can be over before the criminal DWI case has even been arraigned.
Because you often do not know on day one whether a government defendant is in the case, assume a short clock may apply and get advice early. If a commercial vehicle was involved, our truck accident lawyers can begin preserving driver logs and vehicle data while the evidence still exists.
But no matter the type of drunk driving accident you’re involved in, our drunk driving accident lawyer can defend your claim and fight to recover monetary compensation.
Under the drunk driving law of New York, drunk driver accident victims have the right to sue for damages, also known as compensation. A major complication in much drunk driving accident in New York cases is to identify which party is the most responsible for paying. Here’s a list of potentially responsible parties:
The skilled trial lawyers at Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP will work to identify all parties who may be financially accountable for the drunk driving accident in New York.
Many victims of drunk driving accident in New York recover only a small part of the compensation they deserve from car insurance companies. Under the insurance laws of New York, victims of accidents based on negligence can only recover compensation for “economic” damages from the insurance company of the at-fault party.
Examples of economic damages are:
An exception exists if “serious injuries” are caused by drinking and driving. A serious injury according to the insurance laws of New York results in:
It will require a fact-intensive analysis to determine the threshold of a serious injury. It is always a question of fact to know what causes a significant limitation.
Our personal injury law firm has over 90 years of experience helping New Yorkers recover full compensation. Our drunk driver lawyer will fight to collect the damages you need to cover the total cost of your injuries.
We can make a strong case for your right to seek non-economic compensation, whether by filing a personal injury lawsuit or based on serious injury. Compensation for non-economic damages include:
Collecting all these forms of damages can make you whole again. But what about those who caused your injuries? Can they be punished?
In some cases, New York law authorizes Punitive Damages. These are additional compensation designed as punishment to the person who caused your injury.
The sole purpose of Punitive Damages is to exclusively punish at-fault parties. Note that these are not meant as compensation for any specified loss. They are available only if the actions of the defendant were “willful and wanton”.
Drunk driving is the best example of shocking, willful behavior that the New York government wants to deter. Yet, insurance companies will not pay for Punitive Damages since they are not obligated to do so.
But our DUI accident lawyer can, however, file a lawsuit to collect these types of additional damages for you.
While the bar for collecting Punitive Damages may be high, a skilled and experienced NYC drunk driving accident lawyer can recover this additional compensation by filing a strong case.
The latest complete federal crash year with published state estimates is 2024. In 2024, 300 of the 1,101 people killed in New York traffic crashes died in a crash involving a driver with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher, which is 27 percent of traffic deaths in the state. Closer to home, New York City police records for calendar year 2025 list alcohol involvement as a contributing factor in 1,705 collisions across the five boroughs, and those collisions injured 1,010 people. State figures are from NHTSA, Alcohol-Impaired Driving: 2024 Data (DOT HS 813 815), state table. City figures are from the NYC Open Data Motor Vehicle Collisions crash records, calendar year 2025.
Among the recoveries listed on our results page is a $7.25 million settlement in an intersection accident matter in New York City. That was a motor vehicle case, not a drunk driving case. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
No. The criminal case and your civil injury claim are separate proceedings with different parties, different standards of proof and different timelines. Your claim can be filed and investigated while the criminal case is still moving. Waiting is usually the wrong instinct, because physical evidence, vehicle data and witness memory all degrade, and because a criminal case can run past the point where a short notice step would have been due against a government defendant. A conviction, if one comes, can help. It is not something you need to sit and wait for.
This is a common problem in these cases. Many New York policies carry the state minimum, which is often nowhere near the cost of a serious injury. Two paths usually open up. First, your own policy may include uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage that can be triggered, and household or resident-relative policies sometimes apply as well. Second, the driver may not be the only defendant: an employer whose employee was driving on the job, a vehicle owner who handed over the keys, or a business that unlawfully served a visibly intoxicated customer may each bring additional insurance into the case. Identifying every policy that may apply is part of how these claims get evaluated.
New York no-fault benefits generally pay initial medical bills and a portion of lost earnings regardless of who caused the crash, but they are capped and they do not pay for pain and suffering. To recover pain and suffering and other non-economic losses from the drunk driver, an injured person generally has to meet New York’s serious injury threshold. Economic losses above what no-fault pays are treated differently and are not governed by that threshold in the same way. A drunk driver’s conduct can, in some cases, support a claim for punitive damages where the proof shows more than intoxication alone, and punitive damages are outside what no-fault benefits cover.
You generally still have a claim, and there may be more than one avenue open. Passengers are rarely assigned fault, which usually simplifies the liability question, although a passenger’s own conduct can still be raised. The complication is defendants. A for-hire vehicle generally brings commercial coverage, and if a public agency operated the vehicle the claim runs on a separate and much faster track. Many city and local government defendants generally require a written notice of claim within 90 days, other public entities follow their own similarly short procedures, and which one applies depends on the specific entity. In those cases the deadline to actually start the suit generally lands well inside the standard three years too, and just how far inside turns on the particular entity. If you were riding in a vehicle when a drunk driver hit it, find out quickly who owned and operated that vehicle.
Blood alcohol results and the arrest record are the obvious pieces, but they rarely stand alone. Bar and restaurant receipts, point-of-sale records, and staff and patron accounts establish where and how long the driver was served, and whether a business unlawfully served a visibly intoxicated customer, which is what that part of the claim turns on. Surveillance footage from the venue and from nearby businesses usually overwrites itself within days or weeks. Vehicle event data, cell phone records, and the responding officers’ observations of the driver’s condition all matter. The common thread is that much of this evidence has an expiration date, which is the practical reason to bring a lawyer in early rather than after treatment ends.
Nothing up front. We handle these cases on a contingency basis, so there is no fee and no expense unless we recover money for you, and the initial consultation is free and confidential.
A tragic drunk driving accident may have been avoided had the establishment not served the person unlawfully. If you or your loved one was the victim of a drunk driving accident, contact Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP to explore your legal options for compensation.
Our New York City drunk driving lawyer can help hold all parties accountable for their actions contributing to the accident – including parties who knowingly provided alcohol in an unlawful manner. Schedule a consultation today – the initial meeting is free, and you also don’t pay any fees unless we win your case.
