What happened: A Brooklyn court dismissed a physical therapy clinic's no-fault claim after its own affidavit listed two different mailing addresses for verification documents
Who's involved: Burke 2 Physical Therapy and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance
What's at stake: The clinic's no-fault reimbursement claim, dismissed with prejudice
Why it matters: The ruling confirms the 120-day verification deadline still applies even after the Court of Appeals' Mayzenberg decision limited insurers' misconduct-based denials
Where it stands: Decided, dismissed with prejudice, September 24, 2026
A physical therapy clinic told a Brooklyn court it mailed its verification documents to the address on the insurer's request letters.
In the same affidavit, it listed a completely different address. That self-contradiction handed State Farm the win.
Burke 2 Physical Therapy had filed a no-fault reimbursement claim against State Farm for treatment provided to an assignor. State Farm issued verification requests under 11 NYCRR 65-3.5(o), seeking management agreements, W-2 forms, bank records, and lease agreements. The clinic did not provide them within the required 120 days. The Civil Court of the City of New York, Kings County, decided the matter on September 24, 2026.
The clinic's owner swore in an affidavit that he had mailed the documents to the address on State Farm's verification letters. But paragraph 7 of that same affidavit listed a PO Box in Phoenix, Arizona. State Farm's letters directed all documents to Concordville, Pennsylvania.
The court found the contradiction, without corroborating proof of mailing, destroyed the affidavit's value as evidence.
Making matters worse, the clinic had also filed 197 pages of correspondence calling State Farm's verification requests "a nullity" - while simultaneously claiming it had responded to them. And this was not the first round. The Appellate Term had already ruled against the same clinic on the same address issue twice before, in 2022 and 2025.
The clinic's main defense leaned on the Court of Appeals' 2025 Mayzenberg ruling, which held that insurers cannot deny no-fault benefits based solely on allegations of professional misconduct that fall short of a provider ceding control of its practice to an unlicensed party.
The court agreed with the principle but said it did not apply here. Mayzenberg, the court found, only kicks in after the insurer completes its investigation and makes a conclusive finding of professional misconduct. The clinic never responded to the verification requests, so the investigation never got that far.
The complaint was dismissed with prejudice.
For claims teams processing New York no-fault verification requests, the ruling draws a practical line: Mayzenberg reshaped what insurers can deny on the back end, but the 120-day verification clock still runs - and providers who ignore it lose the right to contest the denial at all.
This decision is described as uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.
