Construction Claim Rules in New Hampshire

Statutory interest rate

1-yr T-bill + 2% (judgments/prejudgment, simple); 10% flat default for other business contracts

For judgments (including prejudgment interest, which the statute names explicitly), the rate is set annually by the State Treasurer as the prevailing 26-week Treasury bill discount rate at the last auction before the end of September, plus 2 percentage points, effective the following calendar year. Separately, a flat 10% per year applies as the general default for business transactions with no written rate (excluding consumer credit).

Compounding: Simple; the statute expressly labels the judgment/prejudgment rate an 'annual simple rate of interest.'

Citation: N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 336:1

Source: https://gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXXI/336/336-1.htm

Accrual: breach of contract claim

Not date of breach: from the date of the writ (essentially when the lawsuit was filed)

New Hampshire's prejudgment interest statute, titled 'Interest From Date of Writ,' runs interest from the date the writ (the document commencing the lawsuit) is issued through the date of verdict, at the rate set in the general interest statute. This applies regardless of when the underlying breach occurred.

Citation: N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 524:1-b

Source: https://gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/liii/524/524-1-b.htm

A different, narrower statute (RSA 421-B:25) governs a specific category of securities/Blue-Sky-Law claims and runs interest from the date of the underlying transaction instead; that's a special case, not the general contract rule.

Accrual: property damage / tort claim

Same filing-date rule as contract claims: from the date of the writ, not the date of loss

The same general statute, RSA 524:1-b, governs property-damage and other tort claims; there's no separate date-of-loss provision. Interest runs from the date the writ was issued (filing) through verdict.

Citation: N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 524:1-b

Source: https://gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/liii/524/524-1-b.htm

Like Michigan, Iowa and Louisiana's tort rule, New Hampshire ties interest to the filing date rather than the date of loss or breach, so filing promptly directly affects how much interest accrues.

Actual Cash Value rule

Broad evidence rule

The New Hampshire Supreme Court held both fair market value and replacement cost are permissible standards for valuing a loss, but 'standards and not shackles'; evidence of both may be introduced, with the fact-finder free to weigh all evidence logically tending to establish value at the time of loss.

Citation: Pinet v. New Hampshire Fire Ins. Co., 100 N.H. 346, 126 A.2d 262 (1956)

Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/new-hampshire/supreme-court/1956/4516-0.html

ACV statute or regulation

No New Hampshire statute or regulation defines how ACV must be calculated or restricts depreciation of labor. New Hampshire's ACV rule is a common-law broad evidence rule, and no case law or statute addressing labor depreciation specifically was found.

RSA Title XXXVII Chapter 417 (Unfair Insurance Trade Practices), including RSA 417:4, was reviewed and contains general unfair claims practices prohibitions but no ACV calculation methodology or labor-depreciation provision. New Hampshire courts apply a flexible broad evidence rule to ACV determinations generally, but no reported New Hampshire decision or statute squarely addressing labor depreciation could be located.

Source: https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XXXVII/417/417-4.htm

Checked RSA 417 and the New Hampshire Insurance Department's administrative rules (Ins 1000 series) index; no on-point ACV-definition or labor-depreciation statute or rule was found.

Recoverable depreciation holdback

No New Hampshire statute or regulation specifically governing the timing of a recoverable-depreciation holdback, or the depreciation of labor specifically, was found.

No New Hampshire-specific statute, regulation, or case addressing recoverable-depreciation holdback timing or the labor-depreciation question was located. This appears to be governed by individual policy terms.

Source: https://uphelp.org/claim-guidance-publications/insurance-consumer-rights-in-the-state-of-new-hampshire-2022/

RESEARCHED from scratch (prior entry was blank). No statute, regulation, or case addressing either question was found for New Hampshire specifically in this pass -- same pattern as Wisconsin, Delaware, and Hawaii earlier this session.

“No damages for delay” clause enforceability

No New Hampshire state or federal court has considered the validity of no-damages-for-delay clauses.

A comprehensive 50-state matrix confirms no New Hampshire authority directly addresses this question, consistent with the earlier finding that Famous Players Film Co. v. Salomon (1918) addresses only the general prevention doctrine, not a no-damages-for-delay clause specifically.

Source: https://www.woodsaitken.com/sites/default/files/Survey_50-State-Matrix_Pay-If-Paid_No-Damage-for-Delay.pdf

RESEARCHED via a comprehensive 50-state matrix (Woods Aitken LLP) specifically on no-damage-for-delay clause enforceability, covering all 50 states with primary citations. Independently confirms the genuine absence of New Hampshire authority on this specific question.

Construction contract filing deadline

3 years for a personal action, including an ordinary contract claim

New Hampshire's general limitations period for a personal action, including an action on a contract, is 3 years from accrual, one of the shorter periods in this research project.

Citation: N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 508:4

Source: https://law.justia.com/codes/new-hampshire/title-lii/chapter-508/section-508-4/

State unemployment insurance (SUTA)

New-employer rate approximately 1.7% in the employer's first year; experience-rated range roughly 0.01% to 7.5%; taxable wage base $14,000 (unchanged for many years).

New Hampshire assigns new employers a rate of approximately 1.7% on the first $14,000 of each employee's wages during the employer's first year of operation, after which the employer is assigned an experience-rated tax rate each September. Established-employer rates have historically ranged from roughly 0.01% up to 7.5% depending on experience history and the state's Employment Security Trust Fund balance, which affects an added surcharge or reduction each year. New Hampshire has no state income tax, but it does levy this SUTA/UI tax on employers, confirming that the absence of an income tax does not extend to unemployment insurance.

Citation: New Hampshire Employment Security, Employer Claims & Taxes page

Source: https://www.nhes.nh.gov/employers/employer-claims-taxes

Last checked: 2026-08-26

New Hampshire resets its UI rate schedule every September based on trust fund solvency, and this research could not directly confirm the exact 2026-effective new-employer and experience rate figures against the live NHES page (a direct fetch of that page returned an access error). The $14,000 wage base has been stable for a long period, but the precise new-employer and experience rate percentages for the September 2026 rate year should be reconfirmed directly against NHES before use. The 1.7% figure is corroborated by an independent 2026-dated source. One other source claims 2.7% for the same year; since it wasn't independently corroborated anywhere else, it was not adopted.

Workers' compensation rating

NCCI advisory rating state; workers' comp is written by private carriers under state Insurance Department oversight, with a 2026 statewide rate cut approved.

New Hampshire uses NCCI advisory rates and class codes for workers' compensation insurance, written by private carriers and regulated by the New Hampshire Insurance Department. Industry press reported the New Hampshire Insurance Department approved a 6.1% average workers' compensation rate cut effective for 2026, reflecting the state's use of the NCCI loss-cost filing process rather than an independent state rating bureau.

Citation: Insurance Journal, New Hampshire Approves 6.1% Workers' Comp Rate Cut for 2026; NCCI Proof of Coverage State Guide, New Hampshire

Source: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2025/08/06/834769.htm

Prevailing wage law

New Hampshire has no state prevailing-wage law; its former statute was repealed in 1985.

New Hampshire does not have a current state-level prevailing wage requirement for public works contracts. According to the U.S. Department of Labor's state prevailing wage summary, New Hampshire's prevailing wage law was repealed in 1985. Only the federal Davis-Bacon Act applies to federally funded projects in the state; state and local public construction contracts are not subject to a state-mandated prevailing wage.

Citation: U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, State Prevailing Wage Laws summary

Source: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/prevailing-wages

OSHA plan

Federal OSHA (no state plan)

New Hampshire has no OSHA-approved state plan; both public and private employers fall under federal OSHA jurisdiction.

Citation: 29 U.S.C. § 667 (State Plan roster)

Source: https://www.osha.gov/stateplans

Weight of an OSHA violation in a negligence case

New Hampshire is a confirmed genuinely open jurisdiction: the New Hampshire Supreme Court has not decided whether an OSHA violation can support negligence per se, and this is a court-stated fact, not just an absence of a case to find.

McCarthy v. Weathervane Seafoods (D.N.H.): the court states plainly, "The New Hampshire Supreme Court has not decided whether a violation of an OSHA regulation could support a state law claim for negligence per se." The court did not need to resolve the question in that case because the plaintiff had not properly pleaded the factual basis for his claim.

Citation: McCarthy v. Weathervane Seafoods (D.N.H.).

Source: https://biz.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Civil_Law/Tort_Law:_A_21st-Century_Approach_(Said)/03:_Negligence/3.05:_Negligence_Per_Se_and_Res_Ipsa_Loquitur

A second citation provided alongside this one, "Bacon v. Federal Express Corp., 652 A.2d 1184 (N.H. 1994)," does NOT check out -- it does not match any real case found. A real "Bacon v." case (NH Fish & Game Dept. v. Bacon, 2015) concerns hiking rescue costs, unrelated to OSHA, and a real Federal Express case (Ocasio v. Federal Express Corp.) has a different plaintiff name and concerns comparative-negligence apportionment, not OSHA evidentiary weight. That citation was discarded rather than applied.

Third-party contribution against the employer

RSA 281-A:18 ('Contractor's Liability for Subcontractors') extends statutory-employer exclusivity to a general contractor for a subcontractor's injured employee -- confirmed via a real 2018 NH Supreme Court construction case directly on point.

RSA 281-A:18 makes a general contractor statutorily liable for workers-comp to a subcontractor's injured employee (in the same manner as Georgia, North Dakota, South Dakota, and other states' up-the-line immunity statutes), which correspondingly grants the GC exclusive-remedy immunity from third-party tort/contribution claims. Grady v. Jones Lang LaSalle Constr. Co., No. 2017-0371 (N.H. Aug. 8, 2018) directly addressed this in a construction-site injury context: an employee of a roofing subcontractor was injured using a propane torch on a project where Jones Lang LaSalle was the general contractor.

Citation: RSA 281-A:18; Grady v. Jones Lang LaSalle Constr. Co., No. 2017-0371 (N.H. Aug. 8, 2018).

Source: https://www.workerscompensation.com/daily-headlines/new-hampshires-exclusive-remedy-rule/

CORRECTED: the prior citation (England v. Brianas, 166 N.H. 660 (2014)) was wrong-topic AND had an incorrect page citation (the real case is 166 N.H. 369, not 660) -- that case concerns a domestic-violence victim's duty to warn a new boyfriend, wholly unrelated to workers-comp. Replaced with the real, confirmed, directly on-point construction-subcontractor case -- this was the final state needed to complete the thirdPartyContribution field at 51/51.

Injury-severity gate on contribution claims

Intentional-injury exception requiring substantial certainty the injury would occur -- negligence or recklessness alone is not enough. A separate dual-capacity doctrine can also pierce employer immunity.

RSA 281-A:8 makes workers' comp exclusive. The rule does not apply to injuries the employer intentionally inflicted; to establish intent the employee must show, at minimum, that the employer was substantially certain the injury would occur -- ordinary negligence or recklessness is insufficient. Separately, the dual-capacity doctrine (Ryan v. Hiller) permits suit against an employer who, beyond its role as employer, also occupied a second capacity carrying independent legal obligations.

Citation: RSA 281-A:8; Ryan v. Hiller, 138 N.H. 348 (1994).

Source: https://www.workerscompensation.com/daily-headlines/new-hampshires-exclusive-remedy-rule/

CORRECTED: the prior citation, 'Appeal of Cote, 144 N.H. 126 (1999),' is real but addresses cost-of-living adjustments to disability benefits, unrelated to this exception. Replaced with the actual substantial-certainty standard and Ryan v. Hiller, the real dual-capacity case.

Distinctive state doctrine

Construction-specific limit on the corporate-officer coverage exclusion; substantially-certain intentional-tort standard

New Hampshire generally allows a corporation or LLC to elect exclusion of up to three executive officers or LLC members from workers' comp coverage (RSA 281-A:18-a); but that exclusion does not apply to an officer or member who actively engages in on-site work at a construction site, meaning construction executives can't use the officer-exclusion election to avoid coverage if they personally do hands-on site work. New Hampshire's intentional-tort exception requires the employer to have been substantially certain the injury would occur; ordinary negligence or recklessness is insufficient. See thirdPartyContribution above for the resolved Grady v. Jones Lang LaSalle holding, which also illustrates this construction fact pattern.

Citation: RSA 281-A:8 (exclusivity); RSA 281-A:18-a (officer-exclusion election, construction carve-out)

Source: https://www.workcompconsultant.com/s29-new-hampshire-workers-compensation/

Confirmed real, with a construction-specific detail: the officer-exclusion election does NOT apply to officers who actively perform on-site work at a construction site.