Mr. Dyki, whose association represents insurance company defense lawyers whose sole goal is to resolve the claims of personal injury victims for the least possible compensation, demonstrates his lack of knowledge of the New York state court system as he seeks to prop up Gov. Kathy Hochul’s parroting of insurance company talking points in reforming state laws that currently protect innocent victims of car crashes.
He misrepresents Chief Judge Rowan Wilson’s warning about family and housing courts being “stretched beyond capacity” to suggest that delays in those courts deny justice to accident victims seeking restitution.
For one thing, both the Family and Housing Courts of New York are statewide courts of limited jurisdiction, created under the New York State Constitution and the Family Court Act. The Family Court hears only matters assigned to it by statute, including custody and visitation, child support, family offenses (orders of protection), abuse/neglect (Article 10), juvenile delinquency, and adoption. The Housing Court, which is limited to New York City, is a specialized part of the New York City Civil Court, created by the NYC Civil Court Act. Housing Court hears only landlord‑tenant and housing‑related cases, including nonpayment proceedings, holdover proceedings, repairs/HP actions, Illegal lockouts, and code enforcement matters.
Each court has exclusive jurisdiction over its subject matter. Neither court hears personal injury claims.
The only “overlap” of these courts is practical, not legal — the same families often have cases in both courts, and their overlap has no bearing on the claims of personal injury victims. The one impact that the delay by the defense bar creates is their slow-walking victims, who are denied just compensation for their wrongful injuries, often placing increased financial burdens that impact their ability to pay rent or child support. If these victims had achieved swift resolution of their claims, they would not be faced with real-world problems like paying their rent or feeding their children. But the deep-pocket insurance companies and the high-paid defense lawyers continue not to care about these victims; their goal is to slow-walk their claims, paying low, unrealistic compensation for the injuries their clients are insured against.
Governor Hochul’s proposed reforms to auto insurance would further incentivize those companies to delay and deny legitimate claims by injured victims so the companies can profit from investing those premiums. Their concern is their companies’ bottom lines, not theirs.
This is the simple truth about the defense bar’s claims seeking so-called “insurance reform”. They simply seek laws that allow them to keep the money that victims are justly entitled to for injuries, adding more dollars to insurance companies’ deep pockets.
Andrew Finkelstein is president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association.
Based in New York, Stephen Freeman is a Senior Editor at Trending Insurance News. Previously he has worked for Forbes and The Huffington Post. Steven is a graduate of Risk Management at the University of New York.