Every successful personal injury claim must have two basic components. First, there must be liability, which means that someone else must be legally responsible for the accident. Secondly, there must be damages in the form of a provable type of loss.

If either of these elements is missing, there can be no financial recovery. To recover under New York law on a personal injury claim, the claimant must have suffered an injury that passes the so-called “threshold” test. There must be a “serious injury” as defined in Section 5102(d) of the New York Insurance Law