The Three-Trade Rule: Where It Comes From and What It Is Not

The three-trade rule is an industry rule of thumb, and we could not locate it in any Virginia statute, Virginia regulation or reported decision. A count of trades is a habit of estimating and reviewing rather than a published rule.

The phrase circulates in adjusting and estimating training and in policyholder-advocacy writing. What changes when it reaches a courtroom is its status: it arrives as a party’s description of industry practice, not as a legal test the court applies.

Coverage depends on your policy and your insurer's decision. Questions about coverage belong with your insurer, your agent, or a licensed public adjuster or attorney.

Restoration Doctor writes and documents its own invoice. This article is background reading rather than advice about your claim.

Not in the opinions we could find. We ran a full-text search of the CourtListener opinion corpus for the phrase and read every result. There are four: class-certification appeals in Oklahoma and Alabama, a federal class-certification ruling inside the Eleventh Circuit, and a Montana Supreme Court decision. In each one the phrase enters through the parties, and in none of them does the court turn it into the governing test.

The Montana Supreme Court’s description is case-specific: “As used by the parties in the litigation, the ‘three-trade rule’ is a practice of determining that a general contractor and, accordingly, payment of GCOP costs, is reasonably necessary when three trades are employed to complete the repairs.” GCOP is that court’s shorthand for general contractor overhead and profit.

A search limited to Virginia, District of Columbia and Maryland state and federal courts for the phrase returns zero opinions. That search covers a free public opinion corpus rather than a subscription database, and unreported trial-court rulings do not appear in it.

On a water loss, extraction, cavity drying, containment and cleaning are distinct operations. A record of the work is made while the work is under way: dated photographs of each area, a daily log naming who was on site, moisture readings against the drying goal, and equipment placement.

Restoration Doctor provides project documentation you may share with your insurer: a line-item scope, time-stamped photographs and daily moisture logs. We invoice the property owner. We do not negotiate or settle your claim.

For the companion pieces, our walk-through of how to read a water mitigation invoice explains what each line is, and what a drying file contains sets out the documents themselves. Our overhead and profit explainer describes the coordination line on a restoration estimate.

What this article is not: legal advice, insurance advice, or a statement about your policy. Restoration Doctor is a restoration contractor, not a public adjuster and not a law firm. Virginia’s public-adjuster exemptions cover “a person employed only for the purpose of obtaining facts surrounding a loss or furnishing technical assistance to a licensed public adjuster, including photographers, estimators, private investigators, engineers, and handwriting experts.”

That is the documenting role, not a negotiating one. Nothing above predicts what any carrier will pay.

Every quotation was read from the source at the link or the publication named below. Where we say something could not be located, that is a search result with its method named, not a conclusion about what exists everywhere.