New York was, until May 27, 2026, the largest pure comparative negligence jurisdiction in the United States and one of the last. That distinction ended with the FY2027 state budget, which added a modified comparative fault bar to the Civil Practice Law and Rules. For insurers, claims managers and the plaintiffs’ bar it is the most significant change to New York motor vehicle litigation since the no-fault law itself in 1973. It is also considerably narrower than the coverage suggested, and the narrowness is where the money is.
The enacted text
The budget bill, S9008-C/A10008-C, Part EE, created CPLR 1411(b). In a personal injury action subject to Article 51 of the Insurance Law, the no-fault article, a claimant whose culpable conduct exceeds the defendant’s, or the combined culpable conduct of all defendants, may not recover. The provision took effect immediately and applies to actions commenced on or after the effective date.
Three features of the drafting deserve attention.
It is confined to motor vehicle personal injury actions. Premises, product, construction and professional negligence claims remain under CPLR 1411(a), which is unchanged: culpable conduct reduces damages proportionally and never bars them. The Governor’s original proposal was broader; the legislature cut it back.
It is framed as a comparison, not a percentage. The familiar “50 percent bar” shorthand is close enough for a plaintiff against one defendant. With several defendants, the claimant is measured against their combined fault, and the statute is silent on how non-party fault apportioned under CPLR Article 16 figures in the arithmetic.
It keys on the commencement of the action, not the date of loss. Every motor vehicle claim in the state that was unfiled on May 27 is now governed by the new rule, whenever the accident occurred.
What did not pass
Two provisions in the original package failed, and their failure shapes the exposure picture more than the provision that passed.
The proposed repeal of CPLR 1602(6) did not occur. That subdivision excludes motor vehicle actions from Article 16’s limitation on joint and several liability for non-economic damages. New York therefore now combines a plaintiff-side fault bar with full joint and several liability in the same class of cases. A defendant found 10 percent at fault in a multi-vehicle collision remains exposed to the entire non-economic award when co-defendants are uninsured or judgment-proof. No other modified comparative fault state pairs the two rules this way, and commercial fleet insurers, who are usually the solvent defendant, will feel it.
Labor Law 240(1), the scaffold law, was not touched. Its absolute liability for elevation-related construction injuries, which the Court of Appeals has repeatedly held is not reduced by the worker’s comparative fault, continues to apply, and the new subdivision’s confinement to Article 51 actions keeps it out of construction cases even where a vehicle was involved.
The first-order effects on the market
A filing surge, then a filing trough. Plaintiffs’ firms commenced motor vehicle actions in volume in the last two weeks of May to secure the old rule. Filing counts in June and July fell below trend as marginal-liability cases were re-evaluated. Expect the trough to persist while the bar recalibrates which fact patterns are worth taking.
Summary judgment becomes an offensive weapon for defendants. Under the old rule, comparative fault was almost always a jury question and rarely produced a dispositive motion. Under the new one, a defendant who can establish on the record that the plaintiff’s fault exceeded the defendant’s wins outright. Motion practice on fault will increase, and the first Appellate Division decisions on the standard for granting such motions will set the value of every marginal case in the state.
Liability evidence is repriced. Event data recorder downloads, dashcam footage, telematics, and phone records were useful under the old rule. They are decisive under the new one. Both sides are sending preservation demands earlier, and the cost of early investigation has moved from optional to structural.
Threshold litigation does not go away. The serious-injury threshold of Insurance Law 5102(d) still governs non-economic recovery for covered persons, and the two defenses now stack: a defendant can move on threshold and on fault in the same motion. Plaintiffs’ medical documentation practices, already exacting, have to be paired with equally exacting liability documentation from the first week.
The questions courts will decide in the next 24 months
Whether particular claimants, motorcyclists and pedestrians struck by uninsured drivers among them, are in actions “subject to” Article 51 at all. How non-party fault is treated in the combined-fault comparison. Whether application to pre-effective-date accidents survives constitutional challenge; New York precedent on procedural retroactivity suggests it will, but the argument will be made. And how the new bar interacts with CPLR 1602(6) at the judgment stage, where a low-fault solvent defendant faces a plaintiff who barely cleared the bar.
A resource
I maintain a plain-language CPLR 1411(b) status tracker that carries the enacted text, the provisions that failed, a recovery calculator for pre- and post-reform allocations, and the appellate decisions as they are handed down. It is written for practitioners and claims professionals who need the current state of the rule rather than a summary of the bill as introduced.
Florida’s 2023 reform generated two years of appellate litigation on the same questions. New York’s docket is larger and its statute is narrower, and the interpretive work has only started.
Jason Tenenbaum is the principal of the Law Office of Jason Tenenbaum, P.C., a personal injury, no-fault and employment law firm in Huntington Station, New York. He has practiced since 2002, has written more than 1,000 appellate briefs, and has published analysis of New York no-fault and appellate decisions since 2008.
By Jason Tenenbaum