Types of Personal Injury Cases in New York and New Jersey

Attorneys tend to describe injury matters in two halves: liability and damages. Liability asks whether someone owed you reasonable care and fell short of it. Damages ask what that failure cost you — physically, medically, and financially.

Both halves have to be present. As Michael Licatesi framed it on the show, if someone is negligent and that negligence causes you harm, there is usually a way to build a case, but you still have to be able to prove the harm. A near miss that frightened you is not a claim. A serious fall with imaging, treatment, and lasting limitation may be.

That is also why lawyers ask so many questions before saying anything definite. The same words — "I was in a crash" — can describe a matter with clear liability and little documented injury, or the reverse.

Personal injury is not one practice area so much as a family of them. The fact patterns below share a legal skeleton but very little else, and each is investigated differently.

This is the distinction people are most often surprised by. If your car was damaged but nobody was hurt, that is a property damage claim, and it is a different animal from a bodily injury claim.

Property damage is usually handled directly between you, your insurer, the body shop, and an appraiser. On the show, Licatesi was blunt that this is generally worth handling yourself: the calls can be tedious, but paying a contingency fee out of a repair estimate rarely makes sense. Licatesi Law Group does not take property damage matters, and refers people who need that help elsewhere.

The same goes for storm, flood, and other property losses. Those are insurance coverage disputes rather than negligence claims, and they belong with lawyers who do that work every day.

Firms working on contingency take on the cost and the risk of a case, so they assess both halves before agreeing to represent someone. A matter can have obvious liability and still be one a firm declines because the documented harm is limited or has fully resolved.

Licatesi used his own experience as the example — a surgical complication with clear problems in the care he received, which he chose not to pursue because he recovered and was left without lasting injury. Medical malpractice and nursing home litigation in particular are long, expert-heavy, and expensive, which is why firms are candid about the threshold at which they can help.

If a firm tells you your matter is not one for them, ask whether they can point you toward someone whose practice fits it better. A referral is a real answer, not a brush-off.

Workplace injuries follow their own track. In general, you cannot sue your own employer for a work injury; you pursue workers’ compensation, which addresses medical treatment and wage replacement.

What people miss is the second question: was anyone other than your employer responsible? A different contractor on the site, a property owner, a driver who struck your delivery vehicle, or the owner of a building where a defect caused your fall may all be parties outside the workers’ compensation bar.

That is why intake questions get specific about who pays you, whose name is on the site, and who owned or controlled the equipment or premises. The answers decide whether there is a claim beyond compensation.

Personal injury representation in New York and New Jersey is typically taken on a contingency basis: the fee is a percentage of a recovery, and if there is no recovery there is no fee. Contingency percentages in injury matters are governed by court rules in both states rather than set case by case.

Case expenses — records, filing fees, experts, accident reconstruction — are separate from the fee, and firms commonly advance them. Ask, in writing, how expenses are handled, whether they are deducted before or after the fee is calculated, and what you owe for them if the matter does not resolve in your favor.

A first conversation goes much further when you arrive with the paperwork already in hand. None of this is a prerequisite — call even if you have none of it — but it speeds up an honest assessment.