Statutory interest rate
6% / year, fixed (or the contract's rate, if higher and lawful)
Prejudgment interest is discretionary; courts/juries may award it from a date the court fixes, applying this rate.
Virginia · Construction claims reference
Construction Claim Rules in Virginia
Every figure below is the researched rule for Virginia, 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.
Statutory Interest & Accrual in Virginia
The rate itself and the date interest starts running, which differs by claim type in most states.
Accrual: breach of contract claim
Fully discretionary: the jury or court fixes the start date itself; absent that, interest runs only from judgment entry
Va. Code § 8.01-382 lets the verdict, judgment or decree itself fix the period at which prejudgment interest begins to run. If no specific date is fixed, interest instead runs from the date of judgment (or verdict) entry, not automatically from the date of breach.
This is a genuinely discretionary mechanism; don't assume a date-of-breach default without the fact-finder having actually fixed one.
Accrual: property damage / tort claim
Same discretionary mechanism as contract claims: no automatic date-of-loss rule
The same statute, Va. Code § 8.01-382, applies to property-damage and other tort claims; the jury or court may fix an accrual date, which could be the date of loss, but if it doesn't, interest defaults to running only from judgment entry.
Advertisement
Actual Cash Value & Property Loss in Virginia
How ACV is determined, whether labor cost can be depreciated and the rules on releasing withheld recoverable depreciation.
Actual Cash Value rule
Replacement cost minus depreciation (regulatory)
Defined directly in insurance regulation for homeowners' policy loss-settlement clauses; may not cover every property/casualty line; verify the policy type.
This regulation is specific to homeowners' policy minimum language; for other lines, case-law broad-evidence reasoning could apply instead.
ACV statute or regulation
Virginia's insurance regulation sets a basic ACV and replacement-cost payment structure and the Bureau of Insurance has separately taken the position that labor and other nontangible costs cannot be depreciated.
14 VAC 5-342-70, part of Virginia's Rules Governing Underwriting Practices and Coverage Limitations and Exclusions for Property Insurance, requires that for actual cash value settlements an insurer pay the smaller of the cost to repair or replace with like kind and quality or the actual cash value of the damaged property and requires payment of the full replacement cost without deduction for depreciation once repairs are complete under replacement-cost coverage, subject to any insurance-to-value based reduction. Separately, in Administrative Letter 2025-06 (reported as issued October 31, 2025), the Virginia State Corporation Commission's Bureau of Insurance advised licensed property insurers that they may not depreciate labor or other nontangible costs such as taxes, fees and overhead when calculating ACV, reasoning that depreciation properly applies only to physical materials that degrade over time and characterized doing so as an unfair claim settlement practice. Administrative Letters are Bureau guidance interpreting Virginia's unfair claim settlement practices statute rather than a separately enacted labor-depreciation statute.
Administrative Letter 2025-06 was issued on 31 October 2025 and addresses whether labor and other nontangible items may be depreciated in an ACV settlement under a policy with ACV or replacement cost conditions. It is Bureau guidance interpreting the unfair claim settlement practices statute rather than a separate statute, so the underlying authority is § 38.2-510.
Recoverable depreciation holdback
No Virginia statute or regulation found governing the deadline or process for paying out withheld depreciation after repairs are completed.
14 VAC 5-342-70 addresses how ACV and replacement cost payments are structured but does not set a deadline or notice requirement specific to releasing recoverable depreciation once repairs are finished.
Delay Claims in Virginia
Whether a no-damages-for-delay clause will be enforced against you and the deadline for bringing a construction contract claim.
“No damages for delay” clause enforceability
Void by statute: on public contracts outright, plus on subcontracts signed before work begins
Virginia voids, as against public policy, any public-construction-contract provision that waives, releases, or extinguishes a contractor's right to recover costs or damages for unreasonable delay, though the statute still permits provisions letting the public body recover delay costs the contractor caused, requiring delay notice, providing liquidated damages, or setting a dispute-resolution procedure. A separate, newer statute voids a similar waiver in a subcontract, lower-tier subcontract, or supply agreement when that waiver is signed before any labor, services, or materials are provided; at least one federal court applying Virginia law has read that statute to reach delay damages specifically.
Virginia has two separate statutory overrides depending on contract tier (public prime contract vs. subcontract/supply agreement); confirm which one applies to your specific contract relationship.
Construction contract filing deadline
5 years for a signed written contract
Virginia's limitations period for an action on a contract that is in writing and signed by the party to be charged (or their agent) is 5 years, whether or not the writing is under seal, covering an ordinary written construction-contract claim. Two deadlines sit in front of that one on most construction claims. A mechanic's lien and a payment bond claim each run on their own, far shorter clock, counted from last furnishing rather than from breach and missing either one removes the security while leaving the contract claim alive but unsecured. Check those dates first. Accrual is the other half of the question: the period runs from breach, which on a payment dispute is usually the date payment came due rather than the date the work was done.
Labor Burden Inputs in Virginia
The state-specific rates and requirements that sit underneath a fully burdened hourly labor cost.
State unemployment insurance (SUTA)
Virginia's new employer rate is 2.5 percent, the experience-rated range runs from roughly 0.1 percent to 6.2 percent. The taxable wage base remains $8,000.
The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) assigns new employers a rate of 2.5 percent (plus applicable administrative fees) until they accumulate sufficient experience. Established, experience-rated employers range from roughly 0.1 percent to 6.2 percent based on their benefit-charge history. The taxable wage base remains $8,000 per employee for 2026, one of the lower wage bases nationally.
The $8,000 wage base is among the lowest in the country, so the rate does most of the work in a Virginia labour burden calculation.
Workers' compensation rating
Virginia is an NCCI advisory state; workers' compensation rates are based on NCCI loss costs, regulated by the Virginia State Corporation Commission's Bureau of Insurance.
Virginia participates in the NCCI system for classification codes and advisory loss costs. Insurers file their own rates using NCCI loss costs as a base, subject to regulation by the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC), Bureau of Insurance. Virginia is a competitive, non-monopolistic state and coverage is mandatory for employers with two or more employees.
Prevailing wage law
Virginia reinstated a state prevailing wage law effective May 1, 2021, covering public contracts of $250,000 or more where the state provides funding, or where a locality has adopted a prevailing wage ordinance.
Virginia repealed its earlier prevailing wage law decades ago, then reinstated one through 2020 legislation (effective May 1, 2021), sometimes called Virginia's Little Davis-Bacon Act. It applies to public contracts of $250,000 or more for the construction, alteration, improvement, maintenance, or repair of public facilities, where either a state government unit or instrumentality provides any funding, or a locality has adopted an ordinance requiring prevailing wage compliance for locally funded projects. Wage rates are based on U.S. Department of Labor Davis-Bacon determinations. Contractors who underpay face liability for back wages plus 8 percent annual interest and possible debarment from future public contracts.
Construction Site Injury & Third-Party Liability in Virginia
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.
Comparative / contributory negligence rule
Pure contributory negligence, any fault bars recovery entirely
Any fault attributable to the injured worker, even 1%, defeats the claim. This is the harshest of the four systems and only a handful of jurisdictions still apply it.
Virginia retains pure contributory negligence by judge-made rule. Baskett v. Banks states it in the form still quoted: no person is entitled to recover from another for damages occasioned by his own act or his own neglect.
There is no Virginia statute stating the rule.
The exits matter more than the rule. In every contributory jurisdiction the bar is absolute on its own terms, so a worker's case usually turns on getting outside it rather than on percentages. Two routes recur:
Last clear chance. Where the defendant had a final, separate opportunity to avoid the harm after the worker's own negligence and failed to take it, the bar can be defeated. In practice it is narrow and rarely carries the day.
Conduct beyond ordinary negligence. Contributory negligence is generally not a defence to wilful, wanton or reckless conduct, or to an intentional tort. On a construction site that is the live route: conduct supporting a wilful OSHA violation is the kind of evidence that takes a claim out of ordinary negligence altogether.
The precise scope of both exits varies by jurisdiction, so check the state's own cases before relying on either one.
No percentage model can express any of this. A calculator can only report that any fault bars the claim. Whether the claim is really inside the bar is a pleading question, not an arithmetic one.
Non-economic damages cap
No general cap on non-economic damages
Most states cap non-economic damages only in medical malpractice actions, which does not reach a third-party construction claim. Economic losses, medical bills, lost wages, future earning capacity, are not capped by these statutes.
OSHA plan
Full state plan (VOSH), private + public sector
Virginia operates VOSH (Virginia Occupational Safety and Health), a full OSHA-approved state plan covering both private and public-sector employers. A state plan must be at least as effective as federal OSHA and may set stricter standards, so check the state rule before assuming the federal text applies. It also covers state and local government employees, which federal OSHA does not, so a public works injury is inside the state agency's jurisdiction. Citations are issued by the state agency and contested before the state's own review body rather than the federal commission, which changes where the file lives when you go looking for it. Reporting deadlines follow the federal rule: a work-related fatality within 8 hours, an inpatient hospitalisation, amputation or loss of an eye within 24 hours. For a construction claim the inspection file matters more than the citation: photographs, measurements, witness statements and the inspector's narrative are usually obtainable and are often the best contemporaneous record of the site.
Weight of an OSHA violation in a negligence case
Open question: the Virginia Supreme Court has expressly declined to decide whether an OSHA violation supports negligence per se
The Virginia Supreme Court has declined to articulate the relationship under Virginia law between an OSHA violation and negligence per se, assuming the point without deciding it. Virginia's answer is genuinely open at the highest court. Evidence rather than negligence per se means the violation goes to the jury as one fact among several. The worker still proves duty, breach, causation and damages in the ordinary way and the defendant can argue the standard did not apply to it, that the cited condition did not cause this injury, or that the citation was contested or withdrawn. The reverse is also true: compliance with OSHA is not a defence, since the standards are a floor rather than a definition of reasonable care.
Third-party contribution against the employer
Virginia's statutory-employer doctrine is central and can shield a GC on multi-tier projects, not just the direct employer.
Va. Code § 65.2-302's statutory employer doctrine does the work on a multi-tier project: a general contractor higher up the chain may be as immune as the direct employer rather than exposed to a third-party suit.
McDonald v. Hampton Training School is the authority given for the control-based employer and independent contractor test. It is a hospital and nurse case rather than a construction one, so read it for the test rather than the setting.
Injury-severity gate on contribution claims
Exclusive against the direct employer and any qualifying statutory employer under § 65.2-302
Va. Code §§ 65.2-100 et seq. make compensation exclusive against the employer and the statutory employer. The statutory employer doctrine under § 65.2-302 is what matters on a multi-tier project. Confirm the current piercing exceptions directly. In practice exclusivity takes the direct employer off the tort table entirely, whatever the OSHA file shows. The claim runs against the other parties on the site: the general contractor, the owner, another subcontractor, an equipment manufacturer. The employer or its carrier then asserts a lien against whatever the worker recovers from those parties, so the figure the worker actually keeps is the recovery less the lien, the fee and the costs. Whether the lien is reduced for the cost of obtaining the recovery is a separate state question worth asking early, because it moves the net more than most people expect.
Distinctive state doctrine
Statutory employer doctrine; narrows liability by extending exclusivity up the contractor chain
When a contractor hires a subcontractor to perform work that fulfills the contractor's own contract, the contractor becomes the 'statutory employer' of the subcontractor's employees, even if the contractor doesn't normally perform that type of work through direct employees. The test asks whether the work is part of the contractor's normal 'trade, business, or occupation'; work normally carried on through employees rather than independent contractors. Practical effect: an injured sub's employee typically cannot sue the GC in tort at all; workers' comp exclusivity extends to the GC too. This is the functional opposite of Washington's Stute doctrine (which broadens GC liability); Virginia narrows it.
Put these Virginia rules to work on your own numbers
ClaimDuke's calculators compute delay and extended overhead (Eichleay), fully burdened labor rates, ACV/RCV property loss, claim 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.