The last official count put America's tort system at $529 billion in 2022. Every major input behind that number has kept climbing since. By our estimate, costs reached about $655 billion in 2025, and you're paying for it.
Join the movement — freeTotal U.S. tort costs, billions of dollars. 2016–2022 from ILR's Tort Costs in America (3rd ed., 2024). 2023 onward are our estimates.
Tort costs include every judgment and settlement, the cost of fighting claims, and what businesses and families pay to insure against lawsuits. From 2016 to 2022 they grew 7.1% a year, faster than inflation (3.4%) and the economy (5.4%). Costs carried by businesses grew fastest, at 8.7% a year.
Jury awards of $10 million or more against companies more than doubled from 2023 to 2025. They now reach 68 industries.
Swiss Re estimates litigation trends added 7 percentage points to U.S. liability claims growth in 2023, on top of ordinary inflation.
Insurers had to add $16 billion to prior-year liability reserves in 2024. Commercial auto needed another $2 billion in 2025.
Auto liability is the largest piece of the system. Premiums rose double digits in 2023 and 2024.
ILR's estimate is built from liability insurance premiums, the self-insured share of business risk, and claims data. We tracked the same inputs forward. Every one has grown since the last official count.
| Input | Share of 2022 total | Since 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Personal auto liability premiumsAM Best | 30% ($157B) | +13% in 2023, +12.7% in 2024 $182.4B in 2024 |
| Commercial liability premiumsS&P Global Market Intelligence | 58% ($309B) | +5.4% in 2024 ($162.7B) General liability about +11%, 1H 2025 |
| Commercial auto liability premiumsMilliman; AM Best | 11% ($58B) | +7.3% in 2023, +12.8% in 2024 About +11%, 1H 2025 |
| Nuclear verdicts ($10M+) against companiesMarathon Strategies | Leading signal | 89 → 135 → ~190 2023 → 2024 → 2025 |
| Personal auto liability lossesNAIC | Leading signal | +18.8% in 1H 2025 |
| Liability reserve additionsSwiss Re; AM Best | Leading signal | $16B in 2024 +$2B commercial auto, 2025 |
We applied the updated growth rates to each category of ILR's 2022 figure: about $569B in 2023, $617B in 2024 and $655B in 2025. Then we projected forward at three paces.
Commercial liability growth slows to 3% a year.
The long-run pace since 2016 holds.
The 2022–2024 pace continues.
West Virginia's tort costs fell more than 20% from 2016 to 2022 after sustained reform, and it now has the lowest cost per household in the country. After Florida's 2023 reforms, insurance litigation filings there dropped 23% in a single year.
See the reforms we supportThe 2023–2025 figures and the $1 trillion projection are our own estimates, not figures published by ILR or the Brattle Group. We scaled each category of ILR's 2022 figure by public premium growth. About 31% of ILR's total is self-insured business risk from a proprietary model, which we could not update directly. 2025 relies partly on first-half data, and premium growth also reflects ordinary inflation in repair and medical costs.
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