New York Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under New York law. The calculator applies this jurisdiction's own comparative fault rule and damages ceilings, and every figure below is the one our verified data holds, with the statute behind it and the date we checked it.
What New York law does to your claim
Four things in state law shape a wrongful death claim: how long you have to file, who the state's wrongful death statute says brings the action, the state's comparative fault rule, and whether the state puts a ceiling on what a jury can award. Here is what we hold for this one.
New York uses pure comparative fault.
N.Y. C.P.L.R. 1411·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
The personal representative of a decedent survived by distributees brings the action, and the damages are exclusively for the benefit of the decedent's distributees. N.Y. Est. Powers & Trusts Law §§ 5-4.1(1), 5-4.4(a) reads: “The personal representative, duly appointed in this state or any other jurisdiction, of a decedent who is survived by distributees may maintain an action to recover damages for a wrongful act, neglect or default which caused the decedent's death against a person who would have been liable to the decedent by reason of such wrongful conduct if death had not ensued.” and “(a) The damages, as prescribed by 5-4.3, whether recovered in an action or by settlement without an action, are exclusively for the benefit of the decedent's distributees” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of New York wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here. Read from the Internet Archive's capture of the official page as it stood on 2026-10-06 and 2025-12-12; an amendment after those dates would not show in it.
N.Y. Est. Powers & Trusts Law §§ 5-4.1(1), 5-4.4(a)·Last reviewed 2026-10-16
None on record means our verified data holds no figure of this kind for this state. It is not a finding that no limit could apply to your claim.
What partial fault costs you in New York
The same claim, fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, run through the calculator above four times, with nothing changed but the share of fault assigned to the claimant. The numbers are the engine's output, not an editorial claim about what these cases are worth.
One case, run through the calculator above four times with only the claimant's share of fault changed, under New York law. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. These shares illustrate the rule; they are not an estimate of your own fault.
Every New York deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the New York periods in our verified data, with the statute behind each one. A deadline is the outside limit, never a target, and other rules can shorten it.
N.Y. C.P.L.R. 214(5)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorN.Y. C.P.L.R. 214-a sets 2 years and 6 months (30 months) from the act or omission complained of, or from the end of continuous treatment for the same condition. This field holds whole years, so we publish 2, which understates the period by six months rather than overstating it. You may have up to 30 months. A foreign-object claim runs 1 year from discovery. Confirm your deadline with a New York attorney.
N.Y. C.P.L.R. 214-a·Last reviewed 2026-07-29
Open the medical malpractice calculatorN.Y. E.P.T.L. § 5-4.1·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorN.Y. Workers' Comp. Law § 28·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorN.Y. C.P.L.R. 214(5)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorNew York against the rest of the country
Every count below is read from our state-law data across all 51 jurisdictions, so it moves when the data does. What you will not find here is an average settlement figure: the only one we could compute is a model, and a model presented as a measurement is not a fact.
- 11 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply the pure comparative negligence rule, and New York is one of them.
- Its 2 years to file is the same as the most common deadline in the country, which 32 jurisdictions use. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 3 years.
- We have read the official text of 37 jurisdictions' wrongful death statutes. In 20 the personal representative brings the action, in 7 family members or the personal representative may, and the other 10 name a family member, a trustee or a representative, or name who benefits rather than who sues. New York's is one of the 20 where the personal representative brings it.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages in our data and New York is not among them, so an estimate here is not held down by a ceiling we hold.
Comparisons are drawn from the legal levers that actually move a case value, not from closed-case data, which we do not hold. See the full methodology
New York calculators
New York Wrongful Death questions
Every document behind our state injury law figures, each linked with the date we last read it, is listed on our State Injury Law research sources page.