§ 9801.Actions against the village.

CPLR 9801 covers tort claims against a village: personal injury or injury to property that a plaintiff blames on the negligence or wrongful act of the village itself, or of one of its officers, agents, or employees. Before that kind of claim can go forward, the plaintiff has to satisfy two cross-referenced requirements. First, a notice of claim has to be made and served in compliance with General Municipal Law section 50-e. Second, the lawsuit itself has to be commenced under the procedure set out in General Municipal Law section 50-i.

Notice this section does not spell out the notice-of-claim deadline, the required contents of the notice, or how it must be served; it points a plaintiff to the General Municipal Law for those mechanics rather than restating them. That structure reflects a broader pattern in New York municipal-liability law: a village, like a city, county, or town, gets advance word that a claim is coming, so it can investigate the incident, gather evidence, and evaluate settlement before a lawsuit locks in a version of events.

CPLR 9801 sits alongside three companion sections in Article 98. It handles ordinary negligence and wrongful-act claims; CPLR 9802 covers contract claims and other claims against a village with their own filing deadlines; and CPLR 9804 adds a separate, additional notice requirement for claims arising from defective streets, sidewalks, and similar conditions. A plaintiff suing over a fall on a village sidewalk, for instance, may need to satisfy both 9801's notice-of-claim requirement and 9804's notice-of-defect requirement.