Kansas: Prejudgment Interest Rules

The short answer

Kansas has run a liquidated-damages-only prejudgment interest rule for over a century: if your damages were fixed in amount, or could be worked out with simple math, you can get interest on them at 10% a year (or your contract's own rate) from the date the money became due. Tort claims — most personal-injury and wrongful-death cases — historically got nothing at all, because pain-and-suffering and similarly discretionary damages can't be "liquidated." That changed in 2023: Kansas added a genuine tort prejudgment-interest mechanism, but only for lawsuits filed on or after July 1, 2023, and only if a court decides an award is warranted.

Requirements one by one

Governing law

K.S.A. 16-201(a) is Kansas's long-standing statute for interest on liquidated debts and contracts — it dates back to an 1889 enactment. A 2023 amendment added subsection (b), which for the first time gives Kansas courts a statutory basis to award prejudgment interest in general tort actions. Both provisions borrow the annually-adjusted judgment-interest rate set in K.S.A. 16-204(e)(1). Separately, the Kansas Tort Claims Act, K.S.A. 75-6105(c), bars prejudgment interest against government defendants entirely.

Interest rate

For a liquidated contract or debt claim, the default rate is 10% a year unless the parties agreed to a different rate — that agreed rate then carries through into any judgment under K.S.A. 16-205(a). For a tort claim filed on or after July 1, 2023, the rate is two percentage points below the floating judgment-interest rate set annually by K.S.A. 16-204(e)(1) — currently 7.75%, making the tort prejudgment rate 5.75%. That judgment-interest rate resets every July 1, tied to the New York Federal Reserve's discount rate plus 4 points, so both the judgment rate and the derivative tort rate can change from year to year.

When interest starts running

For a liquidated claim, interest runs "after it becomes due" — generally the date the debt or account balance was fixed, not the date a lawsuit was filed. Kansas courts have applied this even in tort-adjacent contexts where the underlying loss happened to be a specific, ascertainable sum (for example, a conversion of a fixed amount of money), running interest from the date of the wrongful act itself rather than from any later date. The 2023 tort provision doesn't specify its own accrual date in the statutory text; it's left to case-by-case determination as courts start applying the new law.

Contract vs. tort claims

For well over a century, Kansas simply had no general tort prejudgment interest mechanism — the liquidated-damages doctrine effectively excluded most personal-injury and wrongful-death claims, since pain, suffering, and future losses aren't a fixed, calculable number. The 2023 amendment changed that only prospectively: it applies to civil tort actions filed on or after July 1, 2023, and leaves the decision to award interest entirely to the court's discretion. A tort suit filed before that date, or a tort claim whose damages remain genuinely unliquidated even after 2023, still falls back on the older doctrine, which usually means no prejudgment interest at all.

Mandatory or discretionary

Discretionary in both branches, but for different reasons. For a liquidated contract claim, Kansas courts describe the decision to award interest as "a matter of judicial discretion subject to reversal only when there is an abuse of discretion" — a good-faith dispute over liability doesn't, by itself, block an award once the amount itself is fixed. For a tort claim under the 2023 provision, the statute's own text makes the award conditional: interest applies only "in which the court determines that prejudgment interest shall be awarded."

Simple or compound

Simple interest during the prejudgment period — Kansas statute bars charging interest on interest as a penalty provision, and case law confirms true compounding isn't allowed. There's a one-time wrinkle at the moment of judgment: prejudgment interest that's already accrued merges into the judgment as a new combined principal, and post-judgment interest then runs on that whole amount — which can look like compounding but is really just simple interest applied to a larger, merged sum going forward.

Claims against the government

Kansas law bars prejudgment interest against a governmental entity outright, and against a public employee acting within the scope of employment — with one narrow exception: an employee who acted with actual fraud or actual malice loses that protection. Total liability under the Kansas Tort Claims Act is separately capped at $500,000 per occurrence. Claims arising from childhood sexual abuse are carved out of the Tort Claims Act's damages cap and interest bar entirely.

Other exceptions

A tort claim filed before July 1, 2023 gets no benefit from the new statutory mechanism. Support-arrears judgments presume a flat 10% rate regardless of the general judgment rate. Judgments in "limited actions" (Kansas's small-claims-adjacent procedure) draw a flat 12% rate rather than the floating rate that applies to ordinary judgments.

What trips people up

The 2023 date cutoff is easy to miss. Because the tort prejudgment interest mechanism only reaches lawsuits filed on or after July 1, 2023, an otherwise-similar tort claim filed even a few weeks earlier gets nothing under the new statute — it's stuck with the old, much narrower liquidated-damages doctrine, which almost never covers ordinary personal-injury damages.

People also sometimes assume the judgment-interest rate under K.S.A. 16-204 is the prejudgment rate. It isn't automatically — that section sets the rate for judgments generally (and floats annually), and the newer tort provision only borrows it as a reference point, subtracting 2 percentage points, not using it directly.

Common questions

Can I get prejudgment interest on a Kansas personal-injury claim?
Only if the lawsuit was filed on or after July 1, 2023, and only if the court decides an award is warranted — before that date, Kansas had no general mechanism for it at all.

What's the current prejudgment interest rate on a liquidated debt in Kansas?
10% a year by default, or your contract's own rate if it specifies one.

Can I get prejudgment interest against a Kansas city or county?
No. Kansas law bars prejudgment interest against any governmental entity, with a narrow exception only for an individual employee's own fraud or actual malice.

Does interest compound in Kansas?
No, not during the prejudgment period — it's simple interest, though it merges into a new principal once judgment is entered, and post-judgment interest then runs on that combined total.

Statutes and sources

• K.S.A. 16-201 — "(a) Except as provided in subsection (b), creditors shall be allowed to receive interest at the rate of 10% per annum when no other rate of interest is agreed upon, for any money after it becomes due... (b) In all civil tort actions filed on or after July 1, 2023, under chapter 60 of the Kansas Statutes Annotated, and amendments thereto, in which the court determines that prejudgment interest shall be awarded, the judgment creditor shall be allowed to receive interest at the rate per annum of two percentage points below the rate per annum specified in K.S.A. 16-204(e)(1), and amendments thereto." Accessed 2026-07-05: https://ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch16/016_002_0001.html
• K.S.A. 16-204(e)(1) — "the rate of interest on judgments rendered by courts of this state pursuant to the code of civil procedure shall be at a rate per annum... which is equal to an amount that is four percentage points above the discount rate... as of July 1 preceding the date the judgment was rendered." Accessed 2026-07-05: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch16/016_002_0004.html
• K.S.A. 16-205(a) — "When a rate of interest or charges is specified in any contract, that rate shall continue until full payment is made, and any judgment rendered on any such contract shall bear the same rate of interest or charges mentioned in the contract." Accessed 2026-07-05: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch16/016_002_0005.html
• K.S.A. 75-6105(c) — "A governmental entity shall not be liable for punitive or exemplary damages or for interest prior to judgment. An employee acting within the scope of the employee's employment shall not be liable for punitive or exemplary damages or for interest prior to judgment, except for any act or omission of the employee because of actual fraud or actual malice." Accessed 2026-07-05: https://ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch75/075_061_0005.html
• Hamilton v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 263 Kan. 875 (1998), Syl. ¶ 4 — "A claim becomes liquidated when both the amount due and the date on which such amount is due are fixed and certain, or when the same become definitely ascertainable by mathematical computation." Accessed 2026-07-05 via CourtListener (legalresearch tool).
• Iola State Bank v. Bolan, 235 Kan. 175 (1984) — confirms accrual from the date of the underlying liquidated loss, and describes the merge-into-new-principal mechanic at judgment. Accessed 2026-07-05 via CourtListener (legalresearch tool).