It is widely known that a plaintiff must serve a notice of claim upon a municipality in New York state within 90 days of an incident in order to preserve the right to later file a lawsuit against the municipality arising out of that incident. General Municipal Law (GML) §50-e(1).
With respect to the claims of false arrest and malicious prosecution, however, confusion arises because both claims often originate out of the same occurrence, false arrest being the more damaging of the two in terms of reputation and repercussion. However, the critical fact is they are two separate and distinct causes of action, and accordingly, they have different elements and notably different deadlines for filing a notice of claim. The false arrest deadline is often not met for a variety of reasons.
