On Dec. 19, 2025, Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Avoiding Vexatious Overuse of Impleading to Delay (AVOID) Act into law. Gone are the days when defendants can stall injury matters by adding third-party defendants after the close of discovery, but before the note of issue is filed. The AVOID act will have a significant impact on construction injury cases and potentially construction defect cases.

The AVOID Act fundamentally restructures defense strategy by forcing immediate identification of third-party defendants. Effective April 18, 2026 (120 days from the signing of the AVOID Act), newly amended CPLR Section 1007 establishes rigid deadlines for filing third-party actions, altering procedural practice in New York civil litigation. This means attorneys can no longer adopt a wait-and-see approach to impleader. Instead, they must conduct comprehensive indemnification analysis, insurance investigation, and liability assessment within days of filing an answer. The safest course may be blanket impleader of all potentially liable parties. In labor law litigation, this could mean naming every subcontractor who set foot on the project site, regardless of their apparent connection to the alleged injury.

Deterring Defendants’ Delay

Many defense lawyers in construction litigation use delay as a bargaining chip to extract favorable settlements. Belated third-party practice has long been a key tool in this strategy. When an injured worker sues an owner or general contractor for Labor Law violations, direct action against the worker’s employer is typically barred unless Workers’ Compensation Law Section 11 is satisfied.

However, the employer’s contract with the owner or general contractor usually requires contractual indemnification and mandates that the owner or general contractor be named as an additional insured under the employer’s insurance policies. The owner or general contractor’s counsel eventually brings contribution, common law indemnification, and contractual indemnification claims against the employer.

Under longstanding New York precedent, these claims are not ripe until the underlying action is resolved. See McDermott v. City of New York, 50 N.Y.2d 211 (1980) (claims for indemnification and contribution do not accrue until the party seeking indemnification or contribution has been compelled to pay, either by judgment or settlement); and Small v. Yonkers Contr. Inc., 242 AD2d 378 (2d Dept 1997) (common law indemnification claims require actual loss or payment before they ripen). Because ripeness doctrine precluded early adjudication of these claims, parties historically felt no urgency to assert them.

The AVOID Act upends this calculus entirely. Owners and general contractors must now commence third-party actions within 60 days of filing their answer, forcing them to bring unripe claims or forfeit impleader rights. This will spawn a wave of premature motions to dismiss on ripeness grounds. While such motions will likely fail due to unresolved factual questions requiring discovery, they will achieve the very delay the Act purports to eliminate.

Potential Silver Lining

Early joinder of all potentially liable parties may accelerate resolution. When employers and their insurance companies must meaningfully participate in discovery from the outset, rather than lurking on the sidelines until trial, settlement dynamics shift. Multiple parties with exposure may be more willing to contribute to global resolution, potentially leading to earlier settlements than the current system produces.

Courts might apply similar reasoning to prevent defendants from using late third-party practice as a delay tactic in property damage cases, even without the AVOID Act’s specific application. Judges have inherent authority to manage their dockets and prevent gamesmanship.

An Escalating Time Crunch

The AVOID Act establishes a two-tiered framework for third-party practice. Contract-based third-party claims must be filed within 60 days of the defendant’s answer to the main complaint. Non-contractual claims, including contribution and common law indemnification, trigger a separate 60-day period running from the date the defendant discovers potential third-party liability, meaning defendants must be aware of all parties who are present on construction projects in order to ensure that every possible third party is named in a litigation.

The statute creates a cascading timeline for successive rounds of impleader. When a third-party defendant answers, the clock starts for the next level: 45 days to bring a second-tier third-party action, 30 days for a third-tier action, and just 20 days for any subsequent impleader. Each deadline runs from service of the immediately preceding third-party answer, creating an escalating time crunch as the chain of liability extends downstream.

This new timeline will streamline matters in the long run but will slow down cases when they are first filed. As noted above, there will be more motions to dismiss, which stay matters while the motions are being resolved. SEE CPLR 3214.

The AVOID Act strictly limits extensions and late filings. Courts may grant extensions up to 30 days, but no third-party complaint may be filed more than 12 months after the defendant’s answer without both court approval and the plaintiff’s written consent. Additionally, no third-party practice is permitted once the Note of Issue has been filed. Any third-party complaint filed post-Note of Issue faces mandatory severance or dismissal without prejudice. This is not a significant change from standard practice regarding third party complaints filed after the note of issue. Courts generally do not permit third party practice to slow down a plaintiff’s opportunity to recover. (Vincent C. Alexander, Practice Commentaries, McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, CPLR 1010 [internal quotation marks omitted]).

The sole exception for the AVOID Act is when a defendant or third party defendant seeks to file and proceed with a third-party summons and complaint against an employer of the plaintiff in the event that either: 1. the defendant or third-party defendant is seeking contribution or indemnification for a grave injury as such term is defined in §11 of the workers’ compensation law, or 2. the identity of such employer had not been known to the defendant or third-party defendant or otherwise identified until such time periods have expired. In either instance, the defendant or third-party defendant shall proceed with the filing and serving of a summons and complaint within one hundred twenty days after the later of either event. An action in violation of this subdivision shall not be allowed to proceed without written consent of both the plaintiff and the court. CPLR 1007

Once a court severs a third-party action from the main proceeding, motions to consolidate are prohibited.

Defendants must now act with unprecedented speed to identify potentially liable third parties, whether liability arises from contract or common law indemnification. Construction companies should work with counsel to create and maintain a comprehensive database tracking all parties owing contractual indemnification to contractors, owners, or developers. This advance preparation is essential to meeting the Act’s compressed timelines for impleader