Kentucky SB 195 Roadway
Contractor Law

Rebuttable Presumption Of Compliance

Sections 1 through 5 of Acts Chapter 97 give a rebuttable presumption of compliance to any contractor or design professional working on a public highway, road, bridge, or street project after the contracting public entity has accepted the completed work. A plaintiff has to overcome that presumption to reach the contractor. The presumption covers the work itself, the plans, the specifications, and the construction traffic control.

The exceptions are specific. A plaintiff reaches a contractor or design professional through a design error or omission, a failure to follow the plans and specifications, or a latent defect in the contractor’s work. Section 1 defines a latent defect as one that was not discoverable, visible, or apparent.

Substantial-Factor Standard

Section 2 sets out what a plaintiff must show against a contractor or design professional who is entitled to the presumption. By a preponderance of the evidence, the plaintiff must establish that one of three things was a substantial factor in causing the injury or death: a design error or omission that created a dangerous condition, a failure to follow the plans and specifications that created a dangerous condition, or a latent defect in the contractor’s work that created a dangerous condition.

“Substantial factor” is the statute’s own wording. KRS 411.182 answers a different question: how fault is allocated among the parties once liability is established.

Driver-Conduct Presumption In Roadway Suits

Where the operator of a motor vehicle was under the influence, was using a personal communication device, or was traveling 25 or more miles per hour over the applicable speed limit, Section 3 creates a rebuttable presumption that the prohibited conduct was a substantial factor in causing the injury or death. The presumption applies only in suits against contractors, design professionals, or the contracting public entity. It does not create any new defense inside an ordinary two-car collision case.

What SB 195 Did Not Change

The bill went through several committee substitutes, and every provision that would have reshaped ordinary personal injury practice dropped out before enactment.

• Kentucky remains a pure comparative-fault state under KRS 411.182. The 50% bar that was proposed did not become law, so a plaintiff whose share of fault exceeds the defendant’s still recovers, reduced by the plaintiff’s percentage.
• There is no new pre-suit notice requirement between the injury and the lawsuit.
• Third-party bad-faith claims under KRS 304.12-230 remain available where the at-fault driver’s carrier mishandles the case.
• The seatbelt-evidence limits under KRS 189.125 are unchanged.
• The collateral-source rule and Kentucky case law on medical-expense evidence are unchanged. No cap ties recovery to the amount paid.
• Insurers and adjusters still work under the same disclosure framework. No policy-limits gag rule became law.
• The employer-immunity structure inside workers’ compensation cases is unchanged.
• Assignments of insurance claims continue to work as they did before.
• Kentucky’s KRS 411.167 certificate-of-merit framework in medical-malpractice cases is unchanged.

Effective Dates

Acts Chapter 97 applies to claims arising on or after July 15, 2026, which is the standard Section 55 effective date for the 2026 Regular Session. Sections 6 through 9, which cover the Safe at Home program, take effect January 1, 2027. Claims arising before July 15, 2026 are governed by the law as it stood at the time of the injury.

SB 195 In A Crash Case

In an ordinary two-vehicle crash, SB 195 does nothing. Comparative fault, the statute of limitations, personal injury protection (PIP) coverage, bad-faith exposure, and every other framework operate the same way they did before. If the crash involved a roadway defect, a work zone, an active construction project, or a completed public roadway project that a defense expert can point to, SB 195 becomes part of the analysis. Two questions decide which track applies:

• Has the public entity accepted the completed work? If yes, the contractor gets the rebuttable presumption of compliance and the plaintiff carries the burden to overcome it.
• Was the driver impaired, using a device, or 25 or more miles per hour over the limit? If yes, and if a contractor or design professional is in the case, the driver-conduct presumption applies to that party.

Both presumptions are rebuttable. Roadway-defect cases turn on documented specifications, inspection records, contractor-of-record correspondence, and the physical evidence at the scene. The records that decide them are the scene itself, the specification and inspection files available under the Kentucky Open Records Act, and the analysis of a highway-design or work-zone expert.

Overlap With HB 627

HB 627, enrolled as 2026 Acts Chapter 149, is a separate statute that rewrote personal injury protection billing under the Motor Vehicle Reparations Act. The Kentucky PIP Reform 2026 page covers it in full.

SB 195 and HB 627 sit in different subtitles of Kentucky law and do not conflict. A crash on a work-zone roadway project after July 15, 2026, involving a policy that has renewed, engages both statutes at once. A crash outside a work zone engages only HB 627.