Concussion After a Car Accident in New York: The Proof Problem
A concussion is a brain injury. It is also, in a New York car accident claim, one of the hardest injuries to prove — because the imaging that would show a broken bone shows nothing at all here, and the law requires you to clear a threshold before you can recover for pain and suffering. The medicine and the law pull in opposite directions, and the gap is where these claims are lost.
The threshold, and why concussions run into it
New York is a no-fault state. Under Insurance Law § 5102(d), you cannot sue the other driver for pain and suffering arising from a motor vehicle accident unless your injury falls into one of nine defined categories of serious injury. A concussion is not one of the nine by name.
Concussion claims are usually argued into the threshold through one of three categories: a permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member, a significant limitation of use of a body function or system, or the 90/180 category — being prevented from performing substantially all of your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the 180 days after the accident.
Each of those requires evidence that is objective, or as close to objective as the injury allows. Our pain and suffering calculator shows what happens to a claim's value when the threshold is and is not met. And that is the difficulty: a standard CT or MRI of the brain after a concussion is very often completely normal. A normal scan does not mean nothing happened. It means the injury is at a scale the scan does not resolve. Defense counsel will present it as the former.
What actually carries the weight
- The emergency record. Loss of consciousness, disorientation, amnesia surrounding the event, a Glasgow Coma Scale entry, a documented complaint of headache or nausea at the scene. Brief, contemporaneous and hard to argue with.
- Neuropsychological testing. A formal battery administered by a neuropsychologist measures memory, processing speed, attention and executive function against normative data, and includes validity measures designed to detect exaggeration. In most mild traumatic brain injury cases this is the most persuasive objective evidence available.
- Treating specialists. A neurologist, a concussion or vestibular program, vision therapy for convergence problems. Consistent specialist care over time reads very differently from a single visit.
- Non-medical witnesses. A supervisor describing work you can no longer do at the same pace. A teacher. A spouse describing the person before and after. Juries find this evidence credible in a way they do not always find imaging.
- Your own contemporaneous record. A simple daily note of symptoms, missed work and abandoned activities, kept from the beginning, is worth more than a reconstruction attempted two years later.
The three things that quietly destroy these claims
Not being evaluated at all. A great many people walk away from a collision, decline the ambulance, and see a doctor days later when the headaches will not stop. That gap becomes the defense's whole case: nothing was wrong at the scene, and something else caused this. Get assessed the same day even if you feel able to drive home.
A gap in treatment. Cessation of treatment, especially where no doctor discharged you, is the most commonly used argument against a threshold claim. If you stop because no-fault benefits were cut off or because you cannot take more time off work, say so on the record — an unexplained gap is read as recovery.
Underreporting. People minimize cognitive symptoms because they are embarrassing. Difficulty following a conversation, losing the thread mid-sentence, irritability, light sensitivity, sleep disruption, and low mood are all recognized features of post-concussion syndrome. If they are not in the chart, they are not in the case.
What no-fault pays while this is going on
Separately from any lawsuit, your own insurer's no-fault benefits cover medically necessary treatment and a portion of lost earnings regardless of who caused the collision — but the application has to reach the insurer within 30 days of the accident. That deadline is missed constantly, and it has nothing to do with the threshold. Our page on New York no-fault insurance covers the application and what happens when benefits are terminated after an insurer's examination.
One point worth understanding: the threshold applies to motor vehicle claims. If your head injury happened in a fall, at work, or on someone's property, no threshold applies at all. See our brain injury page, and our overview of common car accident injuries.
Common questions
My CT scan was normal. Do I still have a claim?
Possibly. Standard imaging is normal in most concussions and does not rule out a brain injury. What supports the claim is the contemporaneous record of symptoms, formal neuropsychological testing and consistent specialist treatment over time.
Does a concussion meet New York's serious injury threshold?
Not automatically. It is usually argued under the significant limitation or 90/180 categories, and it depends on the quality and consistency of the medical documentation rather than on the diagnosis alone.
How long do post-concussion symptoms last?
Most people improve within weeks. A minority have symptoms that persist for months or longer, which is what post-concussion syndrome describes. Because the timeline varies so much, settling before the picture is clear is a risk.
What if symptoms only appeared days later?
That is common and it is not fatal to a claim, but it does need explaining with medical records. Report the delay to your doctor and be specific about when each symptom began.
Should I settle while I am still symptomatic?
Generally not. A settlement is final, and a brain injury whose extent is still unresolved cannot be valued properly. Our page on how long a settlement takes explains why waiting for the medical picture usually pays for itself.
This page is general information about New York law. It is not legal or medical advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Davidov & Cohen Law. To talk about your own situation, tell us what happened.
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