Swimming Pool and Drowning Accident Lawyer NYC

When inadequate supervision, unsafe access or neglected maintenance contributes to a drowning or serious injury, families are left with medical bills, lost income and hard questions about what went wrong.

Raphaelson & Levine represents people hurt in swimming pool accidents across New York, and families who lost someone to a drowning. We examine pool staffing, access controls and maintenance to assess whether a safety failure contributed to the injury or death, and who may be responsible.

If you were hurt at a pool in New York City, or lost someone to drowning, call (212) 268-3222 or contact us online for a free consultation with a New York City swimming pool accident lawyer to discuss your rights and identify your next steps.

How Long Do I Have to File a Drowning or Pool Accident Case in New York?

In New York, you generally have three years from the date of the injury to file a drowning or pool accident lawsuit (NY CPLR § 214⁵). If a City-run pool is involved and the claim rests on the City's negligence, a Notice of Claim is due within 90 days of the incident (NY GML § 50-e⁶), and a family's wrongful death claim generally has two years from the date of death (NY EPTL § 5-4.1⁷).

The NYC Parks Department runs the City's public pools. If you are injured due to the negligence of a city, county, town, village, school district, or public authority in New York, you must serve a formal Notice of Claim within just 90 days of the incident (NY GML § 50-e).

After serving a timely Notice of Claim on a New York municipality, you must file your lawsuit within one year and 90 days of the date of the incident (NY GML § 50-i⁸).

What Are the Steps If My Case Is Against the City?

A case against the City generally follows these steps:

• Serve the Notice of Claim on the right office on time.
  A Notice of Claim against the City of New York can be served on the NYC Comptroller's Office online through its eClaim system, by personal delivery, or by registered or certified mail (NYC Comptroller⁹). Claims against separate public authorities, including the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and NYC Health + Hospitals, are served directly on that authority. If a NYCHA property is involved, the notice goes to NYCHA itself under the same Notice of Claim rules, NYCHA can require the same exam under oath, and the lawsuit must be started within one year and 90 days (Public Housing Law § 157¹⁰).
• Answer questions under oath if the City demands it.
  After a Notice of Claim is filed, the City (or another municipality or school district) can demand, within 90 days of the filing, that the injured person answer questions under oath, sometimes called a 50-h hearing, and the demand may include a physical exam by a doctor (GML § 50-h¹¹). Once that demand is served, the lawsuit cannot start until the injured person complies; if the exam is not held within 90 days of the demand, the case can go ahead, unless the delay came from the injured person missing the exam or asking to postpone it.
• Wait before suing (NY GML § 50-i). At least 30 days must pass after serving the notice before filing suit.
• File the lawsuit before the one-year-and-90-day deadline runs out.

In personal injury claims against the City, we look at who ran the pool and whether the notice rule applies. Then we prepare and serve the notice for the family. If the City demands a 50-h exam, we prepare you for it before you sit down.

In a wrongful death claim involving a public entity, we filed the required Notice of Claim within the deadline and moved quickly to preserve surveillance video, employment and training records, and the police report.

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

For most personal injury claims, the statute of limitations does not expire until the child turns 21 (NY CPLR § 208¹²). However, this extension does not apply to notice-of-claim requirements for claims against government entities — those 90-day deadlines still apply even when the injured person is a child.

Can My Family Bring a Wrongful Death Case After a Drowning?

Yes, in New York a family can bring a wrongful death case after a drowning through the personal representative of the person's estate, and that case has its own filing deadline.

In New York, a wrongful death lawsuit must generally be filed within two years of the date the person passed away — not the date the initial injury occurred (NY EPTL § 5-4.1⁷). Only the personal representative of the deceased person's estate (an appointed executor or administrator) may bring this claim.

If you aren't sure who in your family can serve as the estate's personal representative, you can ask us about it on the first call.

A second claim covers pre-death suffering. Under New York's survival statute, a personal injury claim does not end when the injured person dies — the estate's personal representative may bring or continue the claim to recover the losses the person suffered before death, including conscious pain and suffering (NY EPTL § 11-3.2¹³).

See what a wrongful death claim recovers.

“When you're grieving a tragic loss, having literally no idea what to do, these are the people you want on your team.” — Lily C.

Results vary depending on the facts and circumstances of each case.

What Is My Drowning or Pool Accident Case Worth?

The value of your drowning or pool accident claim's settlement depends on your injuries, the care still needed, the evidence, who controlled the pool and the available insurance.

During your case evaluation, we may be able to provide a broad ballpark based on similar cases we’ve litigated, but each case is unique.

What Types of Compensation Can I Recover in a Drowning or Pool Accident Case?

The losses we pursue depend on whether the person survived or died, because each kind of claim is measured differently.

Injury and near-drowning claims

When someone survived a drowning or was hurt at a pool, we document the medical care they need now and in the future, the income they lost, and the lasting effect on their body and daily life. In our gym case, the settlement covered those same losses. We build the claim from the treating doctors' records, and for brain injury claims we work with medical experts, life care planners and economists.

Wrongful death claims

In a New York wrongful death action, compensatory damages are measured by the pecuniary — or financial — losses suffered by the decedent's surviving family members (NY EPTL § 5-4.3¹⁴). This includes lost financial support, lost household services, lost parental care and guidance, and reasonable funeral and medical expenses. In our wrongful death case, forensic pathologists helped us prove what the man suffered before he died.

We’ve recovered over $1 billion for injured New Yorkers, including where an owner or operator said the person accepted the risk or that no one had to watch them.

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

What If I or My Child Was Partly at Fault?

Families worry about this when the swimmer broke a pool rule or swam after hours, and one New York rule answers it.

New York generally follows a comparative negligence rule: being partly at fault for an accident does not automatically prevent you from recovering compensation, but your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault (NY CPLR § 1411¹⁵).

What Should I Do After a Drowning or Pool Accident?

After a drowning or pool accident, get medical care first. Then keep anything that shows who was watching the water and whether the gates, drains and warnings worked, and ask the pool in writing to keep its video and records. We send those requests for families.

Under the City's Health Code, an operator of a covered bathing establishment must report a drowning, or an injury requiring referral for medical attention, to the Health Department within 24 hours and record the incident in its log book (NYC Health Code § 165.37¹).

Under the City's Health Code, operators of covered pools must keep copies of their daily operating records at the bathing establishment for six months (NYC Health Code § 165.39¹). That is why we ask for those records early.

What City Records Can Help Prove My Case?

City records can show what inspectors found and who complained about a pool or building before the accident, and we gather them alongside the pool's own files.

• We request the pool's inspection reports, complaints and notices of violation from the City's Health Department under New York's Freedom of Information Law, which requires an agency to respond to a written request within five business days by providing the records, denying the request in writing, or acknowledging it with an approximate date (Public Officers Law § 89¹⁶).
• The Health Department also publishes its pool inspection results, including inspection dates and counts of violations, on NYC Open Data (NYC Pool Inspections¹⁷).
• For the building itself, the Department of Buildings' public records show recorded complaints, violations and inspections (NYC Department of Buildings¹⁸).
• City 311 records can show earlier complaints about a property, including pool complaints, with the date and the agency's response (311 Service Requests¹⁹).

In a staircase collapse case, we obtained the building's Department of Buildings violation history and maintenance logs showing repeated deferred repairs.

You don't need a complete file to call us. Bring what you have.

How We Handle Drowning and Pool Accident Claims

Our pool accident attorneys find out who controlled the pool and preserve its records.

An owner, manager and contractor may blame each other while an insurer asks the family for a recorded statement. We identify every party that ran or serviced the pool and bring in medical experts, life care planners and economists.

Owners often argue a swimmer accepted the risk. When a gym chain raised that defense, we obtained its own maintenance records and prior incident reports showing it knew about the hazard and failed to correct it. When a client was hurt on a water slide, we argued the park operator unreasonably increased the slide's risks.

We have been trying cases in New York courtrooms since 1992, and our attorneys bring 240+ years of combined experience.

What Happens When I Call Raphaelson & Levine?

When you call our swimming pool accident law firm, one conversation can tell you who may be responsible, which deadline applies and what to keep, even before you have every answer.

• We listen: what happened, where, who ran the pool, and the medical care so far.
• We tell you plainly what we see, including whether the City's short Notice of Claim deadline applies.
• If you hire us, we start right away: preservation requests, any City notice required, and the insurer calls.

Call soon, because pool video can be recorded over.

The consultation is free, and we answer 24/7 in English, Spanish and Mandarin.

Our Midtown Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island offices serve clients across all five boroughs, Long Island, and the surrounding counties.