Every figure below is the researched rule for Rhode Island, 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.
12% / year, fixed (compounds on prior prejudgment interest at judgment)
A flat 12% per year applies to civil actions where a verdict or decision awards pecuniary damages, running from when the cause of action accrued (unless the contract sets its own rate). Once judgment is entered, postjudgment interest at the same 12% accrues on both the original judgment principal AND the prejudgment interest already added to it, effectively compounding at that one point.
From when the cause of action accrued, unless the contract already provides for its own interest
R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-21-10 adds interest at 12% per year from the date the cause of action accrued, but the statute expressly doesn't apply where the contract itself already has its own interest provision, in which case the contract's own terms control instead. Absent a contract interest clause, this is effectively the breach date.
Same rule as contract claims: from when the cause of action accrued, essentially the date of loss
The same statute governs property-damage and other tort verdicts, adding 12% interest from the date the cause of action accrued, which for a property-damage claim is generally the date of loss.
How ACV is determined, whether labor cost can be depreciated, and the rules on releasing withheld recoverable depreciation.
Replacement cost minus depreciation (by binding insurance regulation)
A current, binding Rhode Island insurance regulation defines ACV as replacement cost of property at time of loss less depreciation and requires insurers to disclose depreciation worksheets on request. A secondary industry compendium instead cites an unpublished 1999 Rhode Island Superior Court decision for the 'broad evidence rule'; that case's text could not be independently located anywhere else. The regulation is the stronger authority: it's current, binding and directly on point, while the competing case is an unverified, unpublished trial-court decision cited nowhere else.
Conflicting source (unverified): a law-firm 50-state survey cites Vogt v. Rhode Island Joint Reinsurance Ass'n, 1999 WL 1062207 (R.I. Super. 1999), for the broad evidence rule; this unpublished decision could not be independently confirmed anywhere else and the binding regulation is weighted as the stronger authority above.
Rhode Island regulation 230-RICR-20-40-2.9(B) statutorily defines how ACV must be calculated on replacement-cost fire and extended coverage property policies and requires disclosure of depreciation deductions on request, but it does not restrict labor depreciation specifically.
230-RICR-20-40-2.9, titled Standards for Prompt, Fair and Equitable Settlements Applicable to Fire and Extended Coverage Type Policies with Replacement Cost Coverage, requires insurers to determine actual cash value as the replacement cost of the property at the time of loss less depreciation, if any, and provides that upon the claimant's request the insurer must provide a copy of the claim file worksheet(s) detailing all deductions for depreciation. The regulation also allows insurers to limit recovery on property of nominal or disproportionate economic value, provided they give the claimant a written explanation of the basis and amount payable. The text reviewed does not contain language singling out labor cost as exempt from depreciation, so it addresses a statutory definition and disclosure requirement, but not a labor-depreciation ban.
No specific timing or process requirement for paying out recoverable depreciation after repairs are completed was found in Rhode Island's regulation.
Section 230-RICR-20-40-2.9 addresses how ACV is calculated and requires the insurer to disclose the depreciation worksheet on request, but the version reviewed does not set a deadline for releasing withheld (recoverable) depreciation once the insured completes repairs and submits proof, and does not require a specific notice of the right to recover that depreciation.
Reviewed the current text of section 2.9 in full; it does not address post-repair holdback release timing. No other Rhode Island statute on this point was located.
Whether a no-damages-for-delay clause will be enforced against you, and the deadline for bringing a construction contract claim.
Generally enforceable absent bad faith or tortious intent, with strict construction against the party invoking it
Rhode Island recognizes no-damages-for-delay clauses as generally enforceable, dating to a mid-20th-century state Supreme Court decision, but courts construe them strictly and refuse enforcement where the owner acted with bad faith or other tortious intent. A later Superior Court decision illustrates the clause's modern bite: it vacated an arbitration award because the arbitrator had disregarded a contractual no-damages-for-delay provision.
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. Confirmed via independent survey -- exact same foundational case as the existing draft.
10 years for a general civil action, including an ordinary contract claim
Rhode Island's general limitations period for a civil action, including an ordinary contract claim, is 10 years from accrual, one of the longer general periods in this research project; a separate, longer 20-year period applies specifically to a contract or liability under seal.
Confirm whether the specific contract at issue was executed under seal; if so, the longer 20-year period under § 9-1-17 may instead apply.
The state-specific rates and requirements that sit underneath a fully burdened hourly labor cost.
New employer base rate 1.21% (including the 0.21% Job Development Assessment). Experienced employers range from 0.9% to 9.4% under Tax Schedule F for 2026. Taxable wage base is $30,800 for most employers, $32,300 for employers at the highest tax rate.
The Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training (DLT) set the 2026 unemployment insurance base rate for new employers at 1.21%, which includes the mandatory 0.21% Job Development Assessment layered on top of the base contribution rate. Tax Schedule F governs 2026 experience-rated employers, with rates ranging from 0.9% to 9.4% after the Job Development Assessment adjustment. The standard taxable wage base rises to $30,800 for 2026, a $1,000 increase from 2025, while employers assigned the highest tax rate face an elevated wage base of $32,300.
Confirmed exactly against the official RI DLT press release itself (dlt.ri.gov).
NCCI advisory state. Rhode Island uses NCCI-filed loss costs and class codes; employers purchase coverage from licensed private carriers, which are regulated through the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation.
Rhode Island is an NCCI state; workers' compensation classifications and advisory loss costs are filed with and approved through the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation (DBR). Rhode Island is a competitive state, not monopolistic, with coverage available from any authorized private insurer.
Rhode Island has its own prevailing-wage law, applying to public works contracts exceeding $1,000, one of the lowest thresholds among states with such laws.
Rhode Island's prevailing-wage requirements, administered by the Department of Labor and Training under its Prevailing Wage regulations, apply to public works construction contracts once the contract value exceeds $1,000, a markedly lower threshold than most other states with prevailing-wage statutes.
The underlying Rhode Island General Laws chapter number for the prevailing wage statute was not independently confirmed in this research; the $1,000 threshold is sourced from a U.S. Department of Labor summary table current as of January 1, 2023. Reconfirm the exact statutory citation and current threshold directly on dlt.ri.gov before publishing as a legal citation.
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)
Rhode Island has no OSHA-approved state plan; both public and private employers fall under federal OSHA jurisdiction.
Rhode Island's high court has not yet directly addressed whether OSHA violations constitute negligence per se or merely evidence of negligence.
A comprehensive national law-review survey of all 50 states plus DC confirms Rhode Island is among roughly a dozen states whose highest court has not yet decided this specific question, leaving the state's ultimate position unsettled based on available authority.
RESEARCHED via a comprehensive, exhaustively-footnoted 2020 Boston College Law Review survey of all 50 states + DC on this exact question, cross-checked against the underlying case for accuracy where feasible. No Rhode Island-specific holding was found; the state is confirmed as genuinely undecided rather than simply unresearched.
Statutory-employer status is a live issue to check, but the source doesn't detail how Rhode Island's test works.
Third-party claims otherwise run through ordinary negligence, premises liability, retained control, negligent undertaking, product liability, and motor-vehicle law.
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. CORRECTED: the prior citation, "DiQuinzio v. Pincus, 661 A.2d 265 (R.I. 1995)," doesn't match anything real. The actual DiQuinzio case is DiQuinzio v. Panciera Lease Co., Inc., 612 A.2d 40 (R.I. 1992) -- confirmed real and topically relevant (workers' comp exclusivity provision barring suit against a fellow state employee), though not itself a construction case.
Unusually broad immunity: Rhode Island has NOT adopted a general intentional-injury exception. Even willful, reckless, or intentional employer misconduct does not defeat exclusivity.
R.I. Gen. Laws Section28-29-20 makes compensation the exclusive remedy in lieu of all other rights against the employer, its directors, officers, agents, or employees. Unlike most states, Rhode Island has not carved out an exception for deliberate employer misconduct -- a civil suit is barred even where the employer or a co-employee acted with willful, reckless, or intentional misconduct. Rhode Island is grouped with Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, and Iowa as a state without this exception. The one narrow path to reserving common-law rights is an employee's written notice at time of hire under Section28-29-27.
CORRECTED and RESEARCHED: the prior citation, 'Simas v. Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc., 880 A.2d 732 (R.I. 2005),' could not be confirmed. Confirmed Rhode Island is a genuine outlier state without an intentional-tort exception, joining the group already identified this session (Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Nebraska, Iowa).
Distinctive write-in-at-hire reservation-of-rights mechanism; broad and strictly-enforced co-employee immunity; no intentional-tort exception, now confirmed by a direct Rhode Island Supreme Court case
An employee of an employer subject to Rhode Island's workers' comp statute waives the right to common-law recovery for personal injuries unless the employee expressly notifies the employer in writing, at the time of hire, that the employee reserves those rights: with a copy of that notice also sent to the Director of Labor within 10 days. This affirmative opt-out mechanism is distinctive; most other states in this dataset apply exclusivity automatically with narrow after-the-fact exceptions rather than a hire-time reservation option. Rhode Island extends exclusivity broadly to co-employees, and courts have held there is no exception allowing a coworker to be treated as an unprotected third party merely because the coworker was engaged in a prank or acting outside precise job duties at the time of the injury; accepting workers' comp benefits was itself treated as an admission the injury occurred in the course of employment. Even gross negligence by the employer does not restore common-law rights. All Rhode Island employers, including those with only one employee, are required to carry workers' comp coverage. Rhode Island's lack of an intentional-tort exception is now directly confirmed by a Rhode Island Supreme Court case: Diaz v. Darmet Corp. held there is no intentional tort exception in Rhode Island's workers' comp statutes; resolving, at least for Rhode Island specifically, the earlier cross-check flag noting tension between a secondary source's blanket list of no-exception states and narrower judicial exceptions found in some of those same states elsewhere in this dataset.
Confirmed real: Rhode Island uniquely allows an employee to preserve common-law rights against exclusivity by giving written notice AT THE TIME OF HIRE (with a copy to the Director of Labor within 10 days) -- an employee cannot opt out after an injury occurs.
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.