New York has no-fault rules, which means that you can take legal action to obtain compensation after a car accident only if the injuries you sustained were serious, costly or permanent. You will have to prove that the other driver did something wrong and was to blame for causing the accident in order to take legal action and recover monetary damages.
When a driver involved in your accident was drunk, this can make it easier to show that the motorist was negligent. Drunk drivers may be considered negligent per se, which means that the very fact they were drunk is enough to show that they were negligent and unreasonably careless in the eyes of the law. This means that you will have to show that the drunk driver’s actions were the cause of losses that you deserve compensation for. This may include economic losses (actual financial losses), as well as compensatory damage (losses caused by physical pain or a decline in quality of life).