Every figure below is the researched rule for Ohio, with its citation and a direct link to the official source so you can confirm it yourself. Covers statutory interest and when it starts accruing, how Actual Cash Value is determined and whether labor can be depreciated, whether a “no damages for delay” clause is enforceable and how long you have to file, the state-specific inputs behind a fully burdened labor rate, and who can be held liable for a construction-site injury.
The rate itself, and the date interest starts running, which differs by claim type in most states.
7% / year (2026, resets annually)
Formula: federal short-term rate (rounded to nearest whole number) plus 3%, certified annually by the Ohio Tax Commissioner.
Resets every January; re-check the current year's certified rate before use.
From when the money becomes due and payable under the written instrument, generally the breach date
ORC § 1343.03(A) allows interest on money due on an instrument of writing, or on a judgment, from the date the money became due and payable, which for a construction contract is generally the date payment was owed or the date of breach.
Conditional: only after a post-verdict court finding, then from either the date of loss or a notice date depending on the defendant's conduct
ORC § 1343.03(C) lets a party move, after a verdict or decision, for prejudgment interest on a tort/property-damage award. The court must first find the party required to pay did not make a good-faith effort to settle. If granted, interest generally runs from the date the cause of action accrued (essentially the date of loss) when the party at fault acted with the intent to cause harm, or otherwise from a notice/filing-related date set out in the statute. This mechanism is conditional and fact-dependent, not an automatic date-of-loss right.
The good-faith-settlement-effort finding is a real gating requirement, not a formality; whether it applies (and which accrual date follows) depends on case-specific facts the calculator can't evaluate. Confirm the current subsection text and recent case law with counsel before assuming a specific start date.
How ACV is determined, whether labor cost can be depreciated, and the rules on releasing withheld recoverable depreciation.
Replacement cost minus depreciation; labor generally not depreciated
Federal court applying Ohio law; most consistently cited authority in secondary sources, but not an Ohio Supreme Court decision.
Case is a federal district court applying Ohio law, not a state appellate decision; a stronger state-level citation would need further research. Link goes to the free, full opinion text on Justia (added in a follow-up verification pass).
Ohio Admin. Code 3901-1-54 statutorily defines how ACV must be calculated on fire and extended coverage property claims and requires insurers to disclose depreciation deductions on request, but it does not itself ban depreciating labor.
Ohio Admin. Code 3901-1-54, part of Ohio's unfair claims settlement practices rules, requires that an insurer determine actual cash value by taking the replacement cost of the property at the time of loss, including sales tax, less any depreciation, and that upon the insured's request the insurer must provide documentation detailing all depreciation deductions. The rule does not expressly prohibit or restrict depreciating the labor component of a repair estimate. Separately, under Ohio case law (Perry v. Allstate Indem. Co., 953 F.3d 417 (6th Cir. 2020), applying Ohio law), an insurer may not deduct labor depreciation from an ACV payment unless the policy expressly authorizes it; that limitation currently comes from judicial interpretation of ambiguous policy language rather than from the text of 3901-1-54 itself.
The labor-depreciation restriction in Ohio traces to case law (Perry v. Allstate) construing undefined policy terms, not to an explicit statutory or regulatory labor-depreciation ban; that case-law nuance is noted here for completeness but is not being represented as a statutory rule.
No specific timing or process requirement for paying out recoverable depreciation after repairs are completed was found in Ohio Admin. Code 3901-1-54 or elsewhere in Ohio's insurance code.
Ohio Admin. Code 3901-1-54 addresses how ACV is calculated at the time of the initial settlement and requires disclosure of depreciation deductions on request, but the rule text reviewed does not set a deadline for the insurer to release withheld depreciation once the insured completes repairs and submits proof, nor does it require a specific notice of the right to recover that depreciation.
Reviewed the full text of 3901-1-54; it covers ACV calculation and depreciation disclosure but not post-repair holdback payment timing. No other Ohio statute addressing this was located.
Whether a no-damages-for-delay clause will be enforced against you, and the deadline for bringing a construction contract claim.
Void by statute when the delay is the owner's (or a higher-tier contractor's) fault
Ohio directly voids, as against public policy, any construction-contract or subcontract provision that waives or precludes liability for delay when the delay's proximate cause is the owner's act or failure to act (or, in a subcontract, the contractor's). Courts have distinguished a full waiver of liability (barred) from a narrower limitation of damages, such as capping recovery to extended general-conditions costs, which may still be enforceable; case law on exactly where that line falls remains limited.
The statute applies broadly to construction contracts and subcontracts without an explicit public-vs-private carve-out, but 'limitations' short of a full waiver may still be enforced; confirm how a specific damage-limiting (rather than damage-waiving) clause would be treated.
6 years for a written contract claim
Ohio's limitations period for an action on an agreement, contract, or promise in writing is 6 years from accrual, covering an ordinary written construction-contract claim.
Ohio's construction statute of repose (R.C. 2305.131) is understood to apply to tort-based defect claims rather than an ordinary breach-of-contract action; that repose period wasn't independently verified against a primary source this pass.
The state-specific rates and requirements that sit underneath a fully burdened hourly labor cost.
New-employer rate is 2.85% for most industries, but a separate, much higher 5.85% new-employer rate applies specifically to construction employers. Experience-rated range is 0.55% to 10.25% (includes a new 0.15% technology/customer-service fee for 2026). Taxable wage base is $9,000.
Per ODJFS: an employer not yet eligible for an experience rate is assigned the standard new-employer rate of 2.85% for 2026, EXCEPT a construction-industry employer, who is assigned 5.85% instead, more than double the general rate. This is a meaningful correction for a construction-focused audience: the prior entry's flat 2.7% figure was both slightly outdated and missed the construction-specific rate entirely. For experience-rated employers, total 2026 rates range from 0.55% to 10.25%, combining an experience-rate component of 0.4% to 10.1% (unchanged from 2025) with a new 0.15% Technology and Customer Service Fee created under HB 96, which is scheduled to sunset after a set period rather than being permanent.
CORRECTED: the prior entry (2.7% flat new-employer rate, 0.30%-8.50% experience range) was outdated and missed the construction-specific 5.85% new-employer rate entirely, confirmed directly against the official ODJFS page. The construction-rate distinction is especially relevant given this site's audience.
Monopolistic state. Employers must purchase workers' compensation exclusively through the state fund, the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation (BWC); no private insurance option exists for in-state employment.
Ohio is one of four monopolistic-fund states. In-state employers cannot purchase workers' compensation from a private carrier; coverage must be obtained through the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation (BWC), which is the exclusive underwriter, rate-setter, and claims administrator for Ohio workers' comp. NCCI class codes are not used for Ohio's monopolistic fund; BWC maintains its own classification and rating structure.
Ohio has its own prevailing-wage law under Ohio Revised Code Chapter 4115. Thresholds are roughly $250,000 for new construction and $75,000 for reconstruction or repair on most public improvements, with lower thresholds for road, street and sewer projects.
Ohio's Prevailing Wage Law, codified at Ohio Revised Code Chapter 4115, requires payment of locally prevailing wage rates on public improvement contracts funded wholly or partly with public money, once the estimated project cost exceeds statutory thresholds. For most public improvements the threshold is over $250,000 for new construction and over $75,000 for reconstruction, repair, or renovation. For infrastructure projects such as roads, streets and sewers, the thresholds are lower, over $101,201 for new construction and over $30,320 for reconstruction. These thresholds are adjusted every two years by the Ohio Department of Commerce using a construction price deflator index, capped at 3% annual change.
The specific dollar thresholds are adjusted periodically by the Ohio Department of Commerce; confirm the current thresholds against com.ohio.gov before relying on the exact dollar figures for a given year.
OSHA enforcement structure, how much weight an OSHA violation carries in a negligence case, and whether an injured worker's own employer can be pulled back in.
Federal OSHA: no state plan; monopolistic state workers' comp fund
Ohio has no OSHA-approved state plan for private employers; both public and private employers fall under federal OSHA jurisdiction for safety enforcement. Separately (not an OSHA point, but relevant context), Ohio runs a monopolistic workers' comp system: private insurers cannot write workers' comp coverage in Ohio; employers buy through the state Bureau of Workers' Compensation (BWC) or qualify to self-insure.
Correction to earlier research: Sikora's specificity test actually points toward negligence per se for specific OSHA standards, not away from it; no case naming OSHA directly was found, but the applicable framework is now confirmed accurately
Earlier research for this entry stated Sikora v. Wenzel held a building-code violation was NOT negligence per se because it was an administrative regulation. That was a misreading of the case and is corrected here: the Ohio Supreme Court in Sikora actually held that a violation of R.C. 5321.04(A)(1) (requiring landlord compliance with the Ohio Basic Building Code) DOES constitute negligence per se; subject to a notice-based excuse (a landlord isn't liable if they neither knew nor should have known of the defect). The Ohio Supreme Court has consistently held that whether a statutory or regulatory violation counts as mere evidence of negligence or as negligence per se depends on the degree of specificity with which the duty is stated: a general, abstract description of a duty requires the plaintiff to still prove every element of negligence, but where the rule sets forth 'a positive and definite standard of care... whereby a jury may determine whether there has been a violation thereof by finding a single issue of fact,' a violation is negligence per se; meaning the defendant is conclusively deemed to have breached the duty owed, though the plaintiff must still separately prove proximate cause and damages. Many OSHA construction standards (specific guardrail heights, specific fall-protection trigger heights, specific trench-shoring requirements) are exactly the kind of definite, bright-line rules this test points toward treating as negligence per se in Ohio; but no Ohio case was found this pass that expressly applies the Sikora framework to an OSHA regulation by name, so this remains an informed inference from the controlling test rather than a directly confirmed holding. A real, confirmed Ohio Supreme Court case supplies the actual holding: Hernandez v. Martin Chevrolet, Inc., 649 N.E.2d 1215 (Ohio 1995), holds an OSHA violation does not constitute negligence per se, though it remains usable as evidence. Confirmed via a federal district court (S.D. Ohio) directly citing and applying it in an OSHA-negligence dispute.
Still needs a case expressly applying the Sikora specificity test to a named OSHA regulation before this can move from an informed inference to a directly confirmed classification.
Statutory employer is a live issue to check in Ohio, but the source doesn't detail the test.
Third-party claims otherwise turn on premises liability, active participation, retained control, and equipment defects: separate from the direct employer-intentional-tort claim under R.C. §2745.01.
Source: attorney research manual (Construction Injury Law national volumes), self-marked "Draft; verify current law and citator status." Case citations are representative authorities from that manual, not independently re-verified against a citator by ClaimDuke.
Exclusivity can be pierced through Ohio's statutory employer-intentional-tort claim.
Ohio Rev. Code §4123.74 generally protects the employer; §2745.01 governs the employer-intentional-tort claim that pierces that protection.
Source: attorney research manual (Construction Injury Law national volumes), self-marked "Draft; verify current law and citator status." Case citations are representative authorities from that manual, not independently re-verified against a citator by ClaimDuke. Pin citation corrected (125 Ohio St.3d 250, not 102). Confirmed real and directly on point (upheld the constitutionality of Ohio's employer intentional-tort statute, R.C. 2745.01).
Ohio has a dedicated statutory employer-intentional-tort cause of action (R.C. §2745.01), rather than a purely judge-made intentional-tort exception like most states with one.
The statute itself defines the standard for piercing exclusivity via intentional tort, which Ohio courts (Kaminski) have applied: a codified approach that's more the exception than the rule among the intentional-tort states in this source.
CORRECTED pincite: the case is real and directly on point (upholding Ohio's employer-intentional-tort statute, requiring specific intent to injure), but the volume/page cited was slightly wrong (125 Ohio St.3d 102 does not exist; the correct reporter citation is 125 Ohio St.3d 250). Confirmed via multiple independent citing sources including the Ohio Supreme Court's own docket.
ClaimDuke's calculators compute delay and extended overhead (Eichleay), fully burdened labor rates, ACV/RCV property loss, litigation interest and construction-injury settlement ranges. Every calculation is free and live; a documented, citation-backed report is $19.
This page is reference information for your own verification. It is not legal advice and is not a substitute for confirming the current rule with the official source linked above or with counsel. Several states' interest rates float and reset on a schedule (monthly, quarterly or annually), so always check the live source for the figure as of today rather than relying on what is shown here. Which rule actually applies to your specific claim is itself a legal question this page cannot answer for you.