New York Rewrites the Auto PI Rulebook
Governor Hochul's FY2027 budget legislation, signed in May and now working through courtrooms statewide, strips the 90/180-day category out of Insurance Law Section 5102(d). Eight statutory serious-injury categories remain, but the limited-duration disability pathway that filled countless soft-tissue files is gone. Intake rubrics built around that category need rewriting before year-end.
The companion change may matter more day to day. Plaintiffs found more than 50 percent at fault are now barred from non-economic damages entirely, and juries decide comparative fault before ever reaching the serious-injury threshold question. That sequencing shift changes voir dire strategy and changes which cases settle early.
Defense counsel statewide are expected to file summary-judgment motions testing the new threshold sequencing through the first and second departments. Firms that retain biomechanical and causation experts late in the case cycle will feel this first, since fault allocation now arrives earlier in litigation than serious-injury proof does.
Every New York auto PI firm needs a revised intake rubric on file before the next retainer is signed.
GM and Subaru Open an Intake Window
NHTSA campaign 26V717000, opened November 5, covers 67,380 vehicles including the 2023-2027 Cadillac Lyriq, 2024-2027 Chevrolet Blazer EV, 2025-2026 Cadillac Celestiq, and 2026-2027 Cadillac Vistiq for a brake software defect. Owner notification letters go out by December 14, but VINs have been searchable on NHTSA.gov since October 29.
A supplemental GM campaign the same day adds 12,715 Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana vans, model years 2025-2026, for a steering defect missed in an earlier recall round. Any crash involving these vans during the open recall window carries a compounded-defect theory worth flagging at intake.
Subaru issued a separate do-not-drive order, NHTSA 26V685000, on eight 2026 Crosstrek and Forester units over a left-front lower control arm ball joint that may separate from an improperly fastened castle nut. Notification letters are expected December 16.
Run the NHTSA VIN lookup on every GM EV and Subaru Crosstrek or Forester intake through year-end, no exceptions.
Record Med-Mal Verdicts Target Communication Failures
Devlin v. Fairview Health Services returned an $84 million wrongful death verdict in Hennepin County, Minnesota on October 9. A physician assistant ordered an EKG for chest and back pain but no further cardiac workup; the patient died of a myocardial infarction roughly one week later. Future lost companionship alone accounted for $62.5 million of the award.
A separate delayed C-section verdict, Boyd, returned $28 million on November 5, per the Expert Institute's roundup, with labor-and-delivery timing decisions described by MDLinx as the most heavily litigated subspecialty threshold of 2026.
A Bakersfield OB-GYN wrongful death case returned a $9.5 million gross award on October 21, but California's MICRA cap trims the net recovery substantially. Lien-based treating physicians in California should model expected recovery against the MICRA-adjusted figure, not the headline verdict.
Contemporaneous documentation of test-result communication is now the single most litigated fact pattern in provider-side malpractice exposure.
Appellate Signals Stay Mixed on Damages Proof
A Texas appeals court reversed a $1.73 million jury award on November 13 and ordered a new trial on all damages in a rail-worker crash case, ruling that future medical cost estimates lacked adequate evidentiary foundation. The decision is a reminder that speculative future-care projections remain a reversible weak point in occupational-injury files.
A Clayton County, Georgia jury awarded $2 million on November 11 to the family of a child who broke a leg at an Atlanta daycare, more than three years after the incident, showing juries still reward premises-liability claims involving minors even at comparatively modest damages levels.
The Bard PowerPort MDL, 2023-3081 in the District of Arizona, has its first bellwether trial set for December 1, a date plaintiff counsel with inventory in that docket should already have calendared.
Build the future-care damages record early, because appellate panels are actively testing the sufficiency of that proof.
Operations: Lien Tracking Beats AI Adoption on ROI
Clio's 2026 Legal Trends Report, its eleventh annual edition, finds AI adoption at 71 percent of solo firms, 75 percent of small firms, and 86 percent of mid-sized firms. Fewer than one in three of those adopters report any measurable revenue gain, suggesting the tools are deployed without workflow integration behind them.
Firms pairing Clio Work with Clio Manage reported 10 percent higher revenue per responsible lawyer, 6.5 percent more billable hours, and collection rates 2.5 percentage points higher than comparable non-AI firms. The gap between adoption and payoff sits squarely in intake velocity and lien tracking.
Industry vendor guides and an August CasePacer report peg medical liens at 20 to 40 percent or more of gross PI settlement value. Automated lien tracking is framed as the top profitability and compliance lever available to firms this cycle, and it is the same data layer lien-based providers rely on to get paid accurately and on time.
Separately, Meta's ad conversion tracking overhaul is disrupting PI intake funnels, and intake managers should audit attribution models before locking next year's marketing budget.
Providers and firms sharing clean, current lien data through a directory are the ones converting AI spend into actual collected revenue.
California Holds Its Lien Framework, For Now
The California Secretary of State confirmed on June 25 that proponents withdrew ballot initiative 25-0022A1, the Uber-backed measure that would have capped attorney fees and limited medical expense recovery for auto accident plaintiffs. The plaintiff bar's full lien-based recovery framework survives intact for the moment.
A counter-measure, 25-0027A1, would amend the state constitution to block future laws restricting contingency-fee contracts and may still appear on a later ballot. Pebley v. Santa Clara Organics continues to govern billed-value evidence, cited directly in 2026 CACI 3903A.
Lien providers treating lien-electing patients in California retain full billing value as damages evidence under that framework, though MICRA's cap on non-economic damages, as the Bakersfield verdict shows, still separates gross awards from net recovery in malpractice files specifically.
California's lien framework survived this cycle's ballot threat, but a constitutional counter-measure on contingency fees is still pending a future vote.
