This article expands on analysis originally published in the New York Law Journal, with additional commentary on how litigators use verdict data in practice.
Your client has real damages. The liability facts are strong. And yet the defense isn’t returning calls.
This is one of the most familiar — and frustrating — dynamics in personal injury practice. Defendants and their insurers stall because stalling is rational. Time erodes witnesses. It strains clients financially and emotionally. It delays the pressure that forces difficult conversations about money. And without a credible, imminent threat of trial, there’s no incentive to move.
The threat that breaks the stall is the jury. The jury is, as one New York litigator memorably put it, the Sword of Damocles hanging over every negotiation — a trump card that forces both sides toward settlement rather than risk a worse outcome at trial. But the sword only works if the other side believes you’ll actually use it, and if they believe it will hurt.
That’s where verdict data comes in. The ability to walk into a negotiation backed by documented proof of what New York juries actually award in comparable cases changes the conversation. It’s no longer your assessment of case value against theirs — it’s your assessment, with receipts.
Trellis has indexed more than 54,000 premises liability and negligence cases filed in New York state courts since 2022. Here’s what that data shows about how these cases actually resolve — and how litigators are using it to negotiate from a position of documented knowledge.
The landscape
That volume of cases — spread across Bronx, Kings, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk, Richmond, New York County, and dozens of upstate venues — reflects just how relentlessly premises liability litigation flows through New York’s courts. Slip-and-fall, trip-and-fall, sidewalk defect, hazardous condition: the categories are familiar, but the outcomes are anything but uniform.
Within this pool, outcomes vary enormously by venue, injury type, liability facts, and — critically — the behavior of the specific attorneys and insurers involved. Understanding that variance is exactly what gives the Sword of Damocles its edge.
What jury verdicts actually look like
Among the premises liability cases that proceeded to verdict between 2022 and 2025, jury trials remain a high-stakes gamble for both sides. Trellis data shows a clear pattern: when plaintiffs win at trial, they often win big — but defense verdicts are real and not uncommon.
On the plaintiff side, a Manhattan jury awarded $1,392,646 in Vogelman v. Modern Facility Services (New York County, 2022), a premises liability case involving multiple cleaning service defendants. In that same period, a Rockland County court issued a $1,458,101 verdict in Fitzgerald v. Marlboro Equity LLC, a case involving serious injuries sustained at a restaurant premises.
Contrast those outcomes with three jury verdicts from the same period where defendants prevailed entirely — zero awards — including Richardson v. Marriott Hotel Services (Nassau County, verdict: October 2024) and Ransom v. Miele (Sullivan County, verdict: July 2024). In Jay v. Wegmans Food Markets (Erie County), another premises liability claim ended in a defense verdict after trial.
The takeaway isn’t that juries are unpredictable — it’s that they’re selectively unpredictable, and understanding which cases carry real trial risk requires more than intuition.
The settlement corridor
Most premises cases, of course, never reach a jury. The 2,500+ settlements Trellis has tracked since 2023 in New York alone reveal a wide range of outcomes, and — critically — a range of timelines.
Some of the most instructive settlement data concerns duration. Recent Trellis cases show settlements being reached in as few as 0 days after filing (pre-litigation resolutions) to as many as 238 days post-filing. Monroe v. Poughkeepsie City School District (Dutchess County), a case involving an ice-related fall outside an elementary school, settled 238 days after filing. In Nassau County, Abelson v. Almonte Hewlett Realty LLC — a parking lot hazard case — resolved in 75 days. Warshay v. Haven Ave. Realty Corp., a sidewalk injury in Nassau County, took 180 days to settle.
These timelines matter. They tell you how long defendants in particular venues are typically willing to hold out, and when to expect serious settlement conversations to begin.
County-level patterns
One of the most powerful insights from Trellis verdict data is that case value isn’t just determined by injury severity—it’s shaped by where the case is filed. New York County cases show some of the highest individual awards in the dataset. Nassau County shows a mix of plaintiff jury verdicts, defense wins, and active settlement activity. The Bronx, with more than 1,400 premises cases handled by Judge Mojgan C. Lancman alone, shows the density of litigation in high-volume urban courts.
Understanding which judges are seeing the highest caseloads—and which counties generate the most defendant-favorable outcomes — can directly inform both filing decisions and settlement strategy.
The sidewalk problem
Sidewalk defect cases deserve special attention because they represent one of the most consistently litigated premises liability caSidewalk defect cases deserve special attention because they represent one of the most consistently litigated premises liability categories in New York. Consider the range of outcomes visible in Trellis data just from the past two years:
- In Torres v. SDP Associates LLC (Kings County), a defective sidewalk case filed in May 2022 resulted in a $370,200 verdict in September 2024.
- In Jangkum v. Welsh Homes Ltd. (Richmond County), a trip-and-fall on a defective sidewalk resulted in a $531,624 verdict.
- In Johnson v. Town of Hempstead (Nassau County), a sidewalk defect case filed in September 2025 settled in 113 days.
- In Marmolejos Rosa v. J P&C Construction (Bronx County), a sidewalk maintenance case settled in just 53 days after filing.
The spread between those numbers — from five-figure settlements to half-million-dollar verdicts — illustrates exactly why verdict data matters. The question isn’t whether sidewalk cases settle. It’s at what number, and when, and why.
What can be done with this information?
Verdict and settlement data transforms the settlement negotiation from an exercise in educated guessing into a data-informed conversation. Here are three specific ways it changes the calculus:
1. Anchor counter-offers to real data. Rather than making a demand based solely on your own case assessment, you can cite comparable verdicts — same county, same injury type, similar liability facts — to explain why your number is grounded in what New York juries actually award.
2. Profile opposing counsel’s behavior. Trellis surfaces the litigation patterns of specific attorneys across multiple cases. If a defense firm has a documented pattern of settling in the weeks before trial, that’s information that affects how you respond to their opening offer.
3. Identify venue-specific risk. A case that looks similar on paper can have dramatically different expected values in Kings County versus Nassau County versus Sullivan County. Knowing those differences early — before you’ve committed to a litigation strategy — shapes everything from initial demand to trial prep decisions.
The broader point: data is now part of the practice
Defendants stall because they can. They calculate that the uncertainty of trial — the sword hanging overhead — cuts both ways, and that a plaintiff who can’t quantify their own case’s value will eventually accept less than it’s worth.
Verdict data disrupts that calculation. When you can show opposing counsel that comparable sidewalk cases in Kings County have resulted in verdicts north of $370,000, or that a Nassau jury awarded $1.39 million in a premises case against a cleaning services contractor, the conversation changes. The sword becomes less theoretical. The urgency to settle becomes more mutual.
With more than 54,000 cases indexed since 2022, Trellis gives New York litigators the factual foundation to have that conversation — not as a bluff, but as a documented argument about what cases like yours actually cost when they go to trial.
The jury remains uncertain. But uncertainty, properly weaponized, is the whole point.
Nicole Clark is CEO and co-founder of Trellis Research, an AI-powered legal research and analytics platform.