You were in a car accident three months ago. You filed a claim. The insurance company asked for your medical records, and you sent them. Then they asked for more records. Then they scheduled an independent medical exam. Then silence. Weeks pass. You call, get transferred, leave messages. Eventually someone tells you they're "still reviewing." Meanwhile, the bills are piling up, you've missed work, and you're starting to wonder whether they're hoping you'll just go away.
If this sounds familiar, you should know: the delay is not accidental. It's a strategy. And understanding why insurance companies use it — and what New York law says about it — puts you in a much stronger position to protect your claim.
Delay Is a Business Decision
Insurance companies are not charities. They are publicly traded or privately held corporations with a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders, not to the people who file claims against their policyholders. Every dollar paid on a personal injury claim is a dollar off the bottom line. Delay serves that interest in several concrete ways.
First, money held longer earns more. If an insurer can keep a $150,000 settlement in its investment portfolio for an extra six months, the float alone is worth pursuing — multiplied across thousands of claims.
Second, delay wears people down. An injured person dealing with pain, missed work, and mounting medical bills is under financial pressure that the insurance company is not. The longer the process drags, the more likely the claimant is to accept a lowball offer simply to stop the bleeding. Insurers know this. Their adjusters are trained on it.
Third, delay degrades evidence. Witnesses move or forget details. Surveillance footage gets overwritten. Medical records from the acute phase of treatment become harder to connect to the accident as time passes and other life events intervene. A weaker evidentiary record means a lower settlement — or a defensible denial.
Common Delay Tactics After a Car Accident in New York
Delay doesn't always look like silence. Often, it's disguised as diligence. Here are some of the most common forms it takes.
Repeated requests for documentation
Instead of requesting everything needed up front, the adjuster asks for records in stages — your ER visit first, then your follow-up appointments, then your imaging, then a narrative report from your treating physician. Each request comes with a new waiting period. This can stretch a process that should take weeks into months or longer. In legitimate claims handling, a competent adjuster identifies what's needed at the outset.
Disputing causation
After a car accident, the insurer may acknowledge the collision occurred but dispute that your injury was caused by it. They'll point to pre-existing conditions in your medical history, prior complaints of back or neck pain, or degenerative changes on your MRI that are common in most adults over 35. This is particularly relevant in New York because of the "serious injury" threshold under Insurance Law § 5102(d) — to recover compensation for pain and suffering beyond your no-fault benefits, you must demonstrate that your injury falls within one of the statutory categories, such as a "significant limitation of use of a body function or system" or a "permanent consequential limitation." Insurers use causation disputes to argue you don't meet this threshold, and every month of delay gives them more room to claim the injury resolved on its own or was pre-existing.
The "independent" medical examination
New York insurers routinely require claimants to attend what they call an independent medical examination, or IME. Under CPLR § 3121, an IME can be compelled during litigation. But even before a lawsuit is filed, no-fault insurers can require you to attend one under 11 NYCRR 65-1.1 as a condition of continued benefits. These exams are conducted by doctors selected and paid by the insurance company — often the same physicians who perform dozens of IMEs per week for the same insurer. The results predictably favor the insurer's position. Scheduling the IME itself introduces more delay: you wait weeks for the appointment, then weeks more for the report, then more time for the adjuster to "review" the findings.
Transferring adjusters
Your claim gets reassigned to a new adjuster who needs to "get up to speed." The new adjuster may ask for documents you already provided. This is sometimes genuine turnover and sometimes a deliberate tactic to reset the clock on a claim that's been pending too long.
What New York Law Actually Requires
New York does not leave injured claimants without recourse against insurer delay, though the protections are less aggressive than many people assume.
Insurance Regulation 64 (11 NYCRR 216) sets specific timelines for claim handling. An insurer must acknowledge receipt of a claim within 15 business days. It must begin investigating within 15 business days of receiving notice. Once it has all necessary proof of claim, it must accept or deny the claim within 30 calendar days. If the insurer needs more time, it must notify the claimant in writing every 90 days explaining the reason for the delay and the expected timeline for resolution.
Insurance Law § 2601 defines specific "unfair claim settlement practices," including failing to attempt fair and prompt settlement when liability is reasonably clear, compelling claimants to initiate litigation to recover amounts due by offering substantially less than what a reasonable person would consider fair, and failing to promptly provide a reasonable explanation for a denial. Violations are enforced by the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS). While private individuals cannot bring a direct cause of action under § 2601, documented violations can support claims for consequential damages in bad-faith litigation and can trigger regulatory action.
For no-fault (PIP) claims specifically, the timeline is even tighter: under 11 NYCRR 65-3.8, the insurer must pay or deny a no-fault claim within 30 calendar days of receipt of proof of claim. Failure to do so renders the claim "overdue," and overdue claims accrue interest at two percent per month under Insurance Law § 5106(a). This is a meaningful penalty — 24% annually — and it is one of the few areas where delay carries automatic financial consequences for the insurer.
How Delay Affects Your Personal Injury Compensation
The practical effect of delay goes beyond frustration. It can directly reduce the compensation you ultimately receive.
Gaps in treatment hurt your case. If financial pressure from the delay causes you to stop or reduce medical treatment, the insurer will later argue that you must not have been that badly injured — otherwise you would have continued treating. New York courts have dismissed personal injury claims where plaintiffs had unexplained gaps in treatment, particularly at the summary judgment stage when the defendant argues the plaintiff cannot meet the serious injury threshold. The Second Department has repeatedly held that a plaintiff must provide a reasonable explanation for a cessation of treatment to survive summary judgment on the § 5102(d) threshold. Delay-induced financial hardship is the explanation, but it's harder to prove retroactively than to avoid in the first place.
The statute of limitations keeps running. While the insurer delays, your three-year deadline to file a personal injury lawsuit under CPLR § 214(5) continues to tick. Insurers have no obligation to remind you of this. If negotiations drag on for two and a half years without resolution and you haven't filed suit, you're in danger of losing your right to bring the claim at all. For claims against the City of New York or other municipal entities, the deadlines are drastically shorter — a Notice of Claim must be filed within 90 days under General Municipal Law § 50-e.
Financial pressure produces bad settlements. An injured person who has been out of work for months, who has medical bills going to collections, and who cannot pay rent is not negotiating from a position of strength. Accepting a $25,000 settlement for what should be a $150,000 case isn't a choice — it's coercion by process. The insurer knows exactly what it's doing.
What You Can Do About It
There are concrete steps that change the dynamic.
Document everything. Keep a log of every call, email, and letter with the insurance company. Note dates, the name of the person you spoke with, and what was said. If the adjuster promises to get back to you by a certain date and doesn't, that's documented. This record becomes evidence if the claim goes to litigation or if you file a complaint with DFS.
Don't give a recorded statement without counsel. Insurers routinely ask for recorded statements early in the process, before you have legal advice and before you understand what's at stake. There is no legal obligation to give one to the at-fault party's insurer. Anything you say can and will be used to minimize your claim.
Continue medical treatment. Do not let the delay cause gaps in your care. If you need treatment, get it. If you cannot afford it, many providers in New York will treat personal injury patients on a lien basis — meaning they defer payment until the case resolves. Maintaining consistent, documented treatment is one of the most important things you can do for both your health and your case.
Retain an attorney. Once an attorney enters the picture, the dynamic shifts. The insurer knows that an attorney will file suit if negotiations stall, that the claim will be properly valued, and that delay tactics will be identified and challenged. Insurance companies handle claims with attorney representation differently than claims without it — and the data consistently shows that represented claimants recover significantly more in compensation, even after attorney fees.
An attorney can also file a lawsuit before the statute of limitations expires even if settlement negotiations are ongoing, preserving your rights. In New York Supreme Court, filing an action triggers formal discovery obligations that force the insurer to produce information on a schedule set by the court — not on the insurer's preferred timeline.
The Insurer Is Not on Your Side
This should not need saying, but it does: the insurance company — including your own no-fault insurer — does not represent your interests. The adjuster who calls you after a car accident may be polite and sympathetic, but their performance is measured by how much they save the company on claims. Delay is one of the most reliable tools for doing that.
The sooner you recognize the delay for what it is, the sooner you can take steps to protect your injury claim and pursue the compensation you're entitled to under New York law.
