District of Columbia Car Accident Settlement Calculator
Estimate a car accident settlement under District of Columbia law. The calculator applies this jurisdiction's own comparative fault rule and damages ceilings, and every figure below is the one our verified data holds, with the statute behind it and the date we checked it.
What District of Columbia law does to your claim
Three things in state law open a gap between two identical injuries in two different states: how long you have to file, what happens if you were partly at fault, and whether the state puts a ceiling on what a jury can award. Here is what we hold for this one.
DC applies contributory negligence. Any plaintiff fault bars recovery.
District of Columbia common law; Wingfield v. People's Drug Store, Inc., 379 A.2d 685 (D.C. 1977)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
None on record means our verified data holds no figure of this kind for this state. It is not a finding that no limit could apply to your claim.
District of Columbia car insurance law: minimums, PIP and uninsured motorist coverage
What District of Columbia's provisions say about the insurance behind a car accident claim, in their own words, with the copy read named under each.
District of Columbia: Minimum liability coverage
“Each owner of a motor vehicle which is required to be registered or for which a reciprocity sticker is required in the District shall maintain insurance required by § 31-2406.”
“The minimum amount of property damage liability insurance coverage that a named insured shall purchase is $10,000 for property damage in any 1 accident.”
“The minimum amount of 3rd-party personal liability coverage that an insured shall purchase shall be $25,000 per person injured in any 1 accident and $50,000 for all persons injured in any 1 accident.”
Not yet in force, from October 1, 2027 (D.C. Law 26-155, Sec. 3):
“Subsection (b) is amended by striking the phrase "$10,000 for property damage in any 1 accident" and inserting the phrase "$20,000 for property damage in any one accident" in its place.”
Not yet in force, from October 1, 2027 (D.C. Law 26-155, Sec. 3):
“Subsection (c) is amended by striking the phrase "be $25,000 per person injured in any 1 accident and $50,000 for all persons injured in any 1 accident" and inserting the phrase "be $50,000 per person injured in any one accident and $100,000 for all persons injured in any one accident" in its place.”
Not yet in force, from October 1, 2027 (D.C. Law 26-155, Sec. 3):
“Sec. 3. Applicability. This act shall apply as of October 1, 2027.”
A minimum is a floor on what a policy must carry. It is not a limit on what a claim is worth, and it does not tell you what the at-fault driver carries.
District of Columbia: No-fault, personal injury protection and the right to sue
“In addition to insurance required to be provided by an insurer under § 31-2406, each insurer shall offer to each person required to have insurance under this chapter optional personal injury protection insurance as set forth in this section.”
“An insured may obtain, solely at his or her option, any 1 or any combination of the 3 coverages for the benefits set forth in this section.”
“The maximum benefits payable pursuant to this subsection for any victim shall not be less than $50,000. Insurers providing personal injury protection coverage shall provide insurance package optionals with medical and rehabilitation coverage of $50,000 and $100,000 for each victim.”
“(a) A victim shall notify the personal injury protection insurer within 60 days of an accident of the victim’s election to receive personal injury protection benefits.”
When a victim who elects those benefits may sue:
“(b) A victim who elects to receive personal injury protection benefits may maintain a civil action based on liability of another person only if: (1) The injury directly results in substantial permanent scarring or disfigurement, substantial and medically demonstrable permanent impairment which has significantly affected the ability of the victim to perform his or her professional activities or usual and customary daily activities, or a medically demonstrable impairment that prevents the victim from performing all or substantially all of the material acts and duties that constitute his or her usual and customary daily activities for more than 180 continuous days; or (2) The medical and rehabilitation expenses of a victim or work loss of a victim exceeds the amount of personal injury protection benefits available.”
“(g) If the covered victim fails to make an election within the 60-day period, the mandatory liability insurance coverage applies.”
District of Columbia: Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage
“Each insurer selling motor vehicle insurance in the District with respect to any motor vehicle registered or principally garaged in the District shall include coverage for bodily injury or death in amounts of $25,000 per person injured in any 1 accident, or $50,000 for all persons injured in any 1 accident, and coverage for property damage in an amount of $5,000 for property damage in any 1 accident for the protection of persons insured thereunder who are legally entitled to recover damages from owners or operators of uninsured motor vehicles.”
“Each insurer shall offer, except for the operation of motorcycles and motor-driven cycles, optional underinsured motor vehicle coverage in amounts up to the amounts of the uninsured motorist coverage as requested by the insured. Once an insured has rejected this underinsured motor vehicle coverage the insurer does not have to reoffer it. The insurer shall not be required to obtain or maintain written rejections of the underinsured motor vehicle coverage.”
Not yet in force, from October 1, 2027 (D.C. Law 26-155, Sec. 3):
“(5) Subsection (f) is amended as follows: (A) Paragraph (2) is amended by striking the phrase "amounts of $25,000 per person injured in any 1 accident, or $50,000 for all persons injured in any 1 accident, and coverage for property damage in an amount of $5,000 for property damage in any 1 accident" and inserting the phrase "amounts of $50,000 per person injured in any one accident, or $100,000 for all persons injured in any one accident, and coverage for property damage in an amount of $20,000 for property damage in any one accident" in its place.”
District of Columbia: Medical payments coverage
No medical payments coverage requirement was found in the provisions read for this page (D.C. Code §§ 31-2404 and 31-2406).
The personal injury protection benefits quoted above include medical expenses.
What partial fault costs you in District of Columbia
The same claim, fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, run through the calculator above four times, with nothing changed but the share of fault assigned to the claimant. The numbers are the engine's output, not an editorial claim about what these cases are worth.
One case, run through the calculator above four times with only the claimant's share of fault changed, under District of Columbia law. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. These shares illustrate the rule; they are not an estimate of your own fault.
Every District of Columbia deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the District of Columbia periods in our verified data, with the statute behind each one. A deadline is the outside limit, never a target, and other rules can shorten it.
D.C. Code § 12-301(8)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorD.C. Code § 12-301(8)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorD.C. Code § 16-2702·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorD.C. Code § 32-1532·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorD.C. Code § 12-301(8)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorDistrict of Columbia against the rest of the country
Every count below is read from our state-law data across all 51 jurisdictions, so it moves when the data does. What you will not find here is an average settlement figure: the only one we could compute is a model, and a model presented as a measurement is not a fact.
- 6 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply the contributory negligence rule, and District of Columbia is one of them.
- Its 3 years to file is longer than the 2 years that 25 jurisdictions use. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 6 years.
- 7 of the 51 jurisdictions limit non-economic damages (pain and suffering) in our data and District of Columbia is not among them, so an estimate here is not held down by a ceiling we hold.
Comparisons are drawn from the legal levers that actually move a case value, not from closed-case data, which we do not hold. See the full methodology