A bus hit my parked car, and the shop they chose gave it back with a cracked windshield — who answers for what?

Attorney Answer

You have two separate claims here, and treating them as one is what usually costs people the second. The first is the bus owner's responsibility for striking your parked car, which they have already accepted. The second is against the repair shop for a windshield that was intact when the car went in and cracked when it came out. And if that bus belonged to a public authority, the deadlines on the first claim are far shorter than most people expect.

Start with who owned the bus, because nothing else can be sized until that is known. If the bus belonged to a city, county, town, village, school district or a transit authority, two clocks run at once and both are short. General Municipal Law § 50-e(1)(a) requires that "the notice of claim shall comply with and be served in accordance with the provisions of this section within ninety days after the claim arises; except that in wrongful death actions, the ninety days shall run from the appointment of a representative of the decedent". And General Municipal Law § 50-i(1)(c) separately requires that "the action or special proceeding shall be commenced within one year and ninety days after the happening of the event upon which the claim is based; except that wrongful death actions shall be commenced within two years after the happening of the death". Serving the notice and then waiting the three years that an ordinary claim would allow is how these claims are lost.

If that ninety-day period has already gone by, do not assume you are finished. General Municipal Law § 50-e(5) allows a court to extend the time to serve a notice of claim, and the statute lists what the court weighs — including whether the public corporation acquired actual knowledge of the essential facts of the claim within ninety days or a reasonable time afterward, infancy or incapacity, justifiable reliance on settlement representations, and an excusable error in service. Whether an extension is realistic on your facts is a question for a New York attorney, and it is a question with a deadline of its own.

If the bus was privately owned — a charter, a tour or a company shuttle — none of that applies, and the ordinary period for damage to property governs instead.

The windshield is a different claim against a different party. A business that takes your vehicle into its custody to work on it owes a duty of reasonable care while it holds it, and the fact that damage appeared during that custody is itself meaningful. This is a rule that comes from decided cases rather than from a statute, so it is described here in general terms. Practically, the argument is won or lost on before-and-after condition: the estimate written when the car was taken in, the photographs taken before the tow, and the shop's own intake record.

If anyone suggests the parking itself contributed to the collision, that would not end the claim in any event. Under CPLR 1411(a), a claimant's own culpable conduct does not bar recovery: "The amount of damages otherwise recoverable shall be diminished in the proportion which the culpable conduct attributable to the claimant or decedent bears to the culpable conduct which caused the damages".

What you can do

1. Establish who owns the bus: photographs of the markings and fleet number, the police report, and the name on any insurer's letter.

2. Gather every photograph of the car taken before the repair, including anything from a phone, a doorbell camera or the tow operator, and note the dates.

3. Ask the shop in writing for its intake condition report, the repair order and the final invoice.

4. Get an independent estimate on the windshield and ask the estimator to note whether the crack is consistent with the collision damage.

5. Put the windshield dispute to the shop in writing, and keep every reply.

6. Ask the bus's insurer to confirm in writing what it has accepted, and do not sign a release covering the windshield.

7. Take all of it to a New York attorney, and say who owns the bus.

⏱ Time limits apply. For damage to a vehicle, CPLR 214(4) allows three years for "an action to recover damages for an injury to property except as provided in section 214-c", measured from the date of the collision. If the bus belonged to a public corporation, the far shorter periods in General Municipal Law § 50-e(1)(a) and § 50-i(1)(c) govern instead, subject to a court's power to extend the notice under § 50-e(5). Which set applies to you depends on who owns that bus, so have a New York attorney review it promptly — this page does not calculate dates.