Liability Insurance Vancouver WA and Portland Metro Area
LIABILITY INSURANCE
Liability insurance covers injuries that you cause to third parties. If someone sues you for personal injuries or property damage, the cost of defending and resolving the suit would be covered by your liability insurance policy. A general liability policy will cover you for common risks, including customer injuries on your premises.
More specialized varieties of liability insurance include:
Errors and Omissions Insurance
Errors and omissions ("E & O") insurance covers inadvertent mistakes or failures that cause injury to a third party. The act must actually be an inadvertent error, and not merely poor judgment or intentional acts. For example, an E & O policy would cover damages arising from an insurance agent failing to file policy applications, or a notary forgetting to fill out notarizations properly. Errors and Omissions Liability protects your company from claims if your client holds you responsible for errors, or the failure of your work to perform as promised in your contract.
Don’t Be Fooled. Professional Liability (Errors and Omissions Insurance) coverage is not provided by a Commercial General Liability policy. Commercial General Liability does NOT provide coverage for errors, contract performance disputes or any other Professional Liability issues.
Malpractice Insurance
Malpractice insurance, or professional liability insurance, pays for losses resulting from injuries to third parties when a professional's conduct falls below the profession's standard of care. For example, if a doctor makes a mistake that other doctors of his specialty would not have made, his patient might sue him. A malpractice policy will pay his defense costs and any judgment or settlement. Malpractice insurance is available for doctors, dentists, accountants, real estate agents, architects, and other professionals.
Medical malpractice insurance covers doctors and other professionals in the medical field for liability claims arising from their treatment of patients.
The cost of medical malpractice insurance began to rise at the beginning of this decade, after a period of essentially flat prices. Rate increases were precipitated in part by the growing size of claims, particularly in urban areas. Among the other factors driving up prices was a reduced supply of available coverage as several major insurers exited the medical malpractice business because of the difficulty of making a profit.
Directors' and Officers' Liability Insurance
This type of insurance is generally purchased by corporations and nonprofit organizations to cover the costs of lawsuits against directors and officers.
Directors and Officers Liability Insurance provides financial protection for the directors and officers of your company in the event they are sued in conjunction with the performance of their duties as they relate to the company. Think of Directors and Officers Insurance as a management Errors and Omissions policy.
Directors & Officers Liability Insurance can usually include Employment Practices Liability and sometimes Fiduciary Liability. The former involves harassment and discrimination suits, and is where the majority of your exposure will be.
Directors and Officers Insurance is often confused with Errors & Omissions Liability. The two are not synonymous; Errors & Omissions is concerned with performance failures and negligence with respect to your products and services, not the performance and duties of management. Generally it is a good idea to carry both Directors and Officers Liability Insurance and Errors and Omissions Liability Insurance.
Commercial Automobile Insurance
Commercial automobile policies cover the cars, vans, trucks and trailers used in your business. The coverage will reimburse you if your vehicles are damaged or stolen or if the driver injures a person or property. See the link for more.
In many countries, liability insurance is a compulsory form of insurance for those at risk of being sued by third parties for negligence. The most usual classes of mandatory policy cover the drivers of vehicles, those who offer professional services to the public, those who manufacture products that may be harmful, and those who offer employment. The reason for such laws is that the classes of insured are deliberately engaging in activities that put others at risk of injury or loss. Public policy therefore requires that such individuals should carry insurance so that, if their activities do cause loss or damage to another, money will be available to pay compensation. In addition, there are a further range of perils that prudent people insure against and, consequently, the number and range of liability policies has increased in line with the rise of contingency fee litigation offered by lawyers (sometimes on a class action basis). Such policies fall into three main classes:
Public liability
Industry and commerce are based on a range of processes and activities that have the potential to affect third parties (members of the public, visitors, trespassers, sub-contractors, etc. who may be physically injured or whose property may be damaged or both). It varies from state to state as to whether either or both employer's liability insurance and public liability insurance have been made compulsory by law. Regardless of compulsion, however, most organisations include public liability insurance in their insurance portfolio even though the conditions, exclusions, and warranties included within the standard policies can be onerous.
Private individuals also occupy land and engage in potentially dangerous activities. For example, a rotten branch may fall from an old tree and injure a pedestrian, and many ride bicycles and skateboards in public places. The majority of states requires motorists to carry insurance and criminalise those who drive without a valid policy. Many also require insurance companies to provide a default fund to offer compensation to those physically injured in accidents where the driver did not have a valid policy.
Product
In the emerging . Product liability insurance is not a compulsory class of insurance in all countries, but legislation such as the UK. Consumer Protection Act 1987 and the EC Directive on Product Liability (25/7/85) require those manufacturing or supplying goods to carry some form of product liability insurance, usually as part of a combined liability policy. The scale of potential liability is illustrated by cases such as those involving Mercedes-Benz for unstable vehicles and Perrier for benzene contamination, but the full list covers pharmaceuticals and medical devices, asbestos, tobacco, recreational equipment, mechanical and electrical products, chemicals and pesticides, agricultural products and equipment, food contamination, and all other major product classes.
Employers
New policies have been developed to cover any liability that might be imposed on an employer if an employee is injured in the course of his or her employment. In many states, the insurers are prohibited from including conditions within their policies that seek to impose any unreasonable conditions precedent to liability, or require the insured either to take reasonable precautions or to comply with current legislation and regulations. In those countries where such insurance is not compulsory, smaller organizations are often driven into bankruptcy when faced by claims not covered by insurance.
Many of the public and product liability risks are often covered together under a general liability (or "umbrella") policy. These risks may include bodily injury or property damage caused by direct or indirect actions of the insured.
Evidentiary rules regarding liability insurance
In the United States, most states make only the carrying of auto insurance mandatory. Where the carrying of a policy is not mandatory and a third party makes a claim for injuries suffered, evidence that a party has liability insurance is generally inadmissible in a lawsuit on public policy grounds, because the courts do not want to discourage parties from carrying such insurance. There are two exceptions to this rule:
If the owner of the insurance policy disputes ownership or control of the property, evidence of liability insurance can be introduced to show that it is likely that the owner of the policy probably does own or control the property.
If a witness has an interest in the policy that gives the witness a motive or bias with respect to specific testimony, the existence of the policy can be introduced to show this motive or bias. Federal rules of civil procedure rule 26 was amended in 1993 to require that any insurance policy that may pay or may reimburse be made available for photocopying by the opposing litigants, although the policies are not normally information given to the jury. Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure rule 46 says that an appeal can be dismissed or affirmed if counsel does not update their notice of appearance to acknowledge insurance. The Cornell University Legal Institute web site includes congressional notes.
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There are Three Main Types of Commercial Insurance:
Property Insurance | Liability Insurance | Worker's Compensation
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All of these are things that people typically equate with "Premium" insurance, but doesn't have to be the case. We will work with you to make sure your Commercial insurance is the best it can be within your budget. Combine it with our Homeowners Insurance, Renters Insurance, or Commercial Insurance to get an even better rate! Ask us how... |
