Legal Question in Traffic Law in New York

Good morning,

My situation is a bit odd and I�m not sure how I should proceed. Basically, I got in to a car accident back in 2007 in which the brakes on my vehicle failed after a repair/replacement of them. This caused me to run a red light, be T-boned by another vehicle, and come to rest head on with a 3rd vehicle stopped at the light. Now for the sake of reference I will identified the cars as the one that hit me was a Audi and the one I came to rest on was a Mercedes. Due to the how the incident transpired, the driver of the Mercedes had no damage to his vehicle or injury to any passages. He determined there was no need to make a report to insurance and/or take any legal action. The Audi driver on the other hand had massive vehicle damage and wanted to go through the proper channels in regards to addressing the issue at hand. At this time, I was a young man with no help and very little finance�s. Due to this, I was late on insurance payments and this caused my insurance to lap a day or 2 prior to this incident. I received a letter 3-4 month later stating that the Audi driver�s insurance company �GEICO� was suing me for 10K in damages. Now unfortunately, I did not handle that situation as responsibly as I should have over the years, but in my defense. I had no means to address it at that time. This has led to a lean of sorts being put on my license and me having no way of legally doing anything driving related until this is resolved. I am now finally in a position to fix this mess and that is what I would like to do. My biggest question here is, I am aware of NY law in regards to someone hitting you with their car regardless of circumstance. Which is why I believe the officer on scene wrote the police report as a no fault accident. With that said, I do not believe I should be responsible for the full 10K and I would like to fight it if the fight makes sense. Does it? If it would be a better financial decision to just pay it off and avoid the excess legal fees. I will gladly take that route as well, but I want to make sure that after years of letting this evolve in to the headache It has become. I am finally going about handling this the best way possible.


Asked on 3/23/17, 9:02 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Michael Palumbo Palumbo & Associates, PC

Your license is suspended for 2 reasons: (1) operating without insurance, and (2) failure to pay a judgment. There is a path to getting your license cleared and un-suspended, and we can consult you on that and give you step by step instructions on how to do that. Call us: 914-777-2990.

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Answered on 3/23/17, 1:03 pm


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