An Act relative to prejudgment interest rates

This bill updates the rules for calculating prejudgment interest in Massachusetts courts, which is money awarded to a winning party for the time between a lawsuit filing and the final judgment. Instead of using a fixed 12 percent annual rate, the law would now require courts to calculate interest based on the weekly average yield of one-year U.S. Treasury bonds published by the Federal Reserve. This change directly affects judges, lawyers, and individuals or businesses involved in civil litigation by making interest rates fluctuate with market conditions rather than staying static.