You're riding your motorcycle down a quiet village road in Rockville Centre on a Saturday morning. A sunken utility cut — a trench that was paved over and left sitting two inches below the road surface — catches your front wheel. You go down hard, and when you wake up in the trauma unit, you can't feel your legs. Months later, the village's lawyers move to dismiss your entire case for one reason: nobody ever sent the village clerk a written complaint about that exact defect b