Liability Insurance:Coverage for your liability to others

by Guest » Tue Dec 01, 2009 08:39 am
Guest

Liability insurance comes into play when someone hurts himself inside your premises. Premises could mean your business area or even your home. With liability insurance you do not have to worry about bearing the entire cost of compensating someone who gets hurt, out of your own pocket on the spot. You can save for such a situation and when it does occur can take help from your liability insurance.

What is liability insurance?

Liability insurance is that insurance that provides coverage when a third party gets hurt in your premises. If a legal liability is established, the claimant will be compensated for the damages incurred. Liability insurance is developed in order to protect you and your business (in case you own a business) against such expenditures.

What does liability insurance cover?

Do you deal with clients? Do you come in contact with the public in the course of your business? If your answer is 'yes', then public liability should be the insurance to opt for. If you have employees in your business, you may want to go for employer's liability insurance.
  • Public liability insurance:
    Public liability insurance is meant to provide coverage for damages and compensation payouts along with legal fees for an injury or death caused to a member of the public or even damage to their property. Public liability claims can be really expensive and if you are running a business and don't have liability insurance, you could be in for trouble. Know more....
  • Employer's Liability Insurance: This insurance pays for damages caused to employees in a business as a result of the fault of the employer. If an employee gets injured due to the negligence of the employer, he can seek compensation. This insurance also covers you for the cost of fighting legal cases that your employees hold against you. Having employer's liability means that the company is able to compensate the claims made by its employees without compromising its financial stability. Even if your company goes into liquidation or receivership, holding the cover would mean that your employee can make a liability claim and still be paid for the damage.

    Employer's liability covers the following:
    1. If an employee falls seriously ill, gets injured or even killed while working for you, your business could be liable to provide compensation.
    2. If there is a legal cost of a claim made by an employee, liability insurance covers the same too, including the legal fees of the company as well as the claimant.
    3. If you happen to be involved in a case that concerns the welfare of any employee like maybe a breach of health or safety regulations, your liability insurance coverage could provide for the expenditure that would be made to defend such a case.
  • Product Liability:
    With product liability insurance you can cover damage or injury to another business or person as a result of failure of any of your products or the product that you have put on sale. Whether, you sell, supply or simply deliver goods, you may need liability insurance protection for any claim to a damaged good.

Property Owner's Liability Insurance

If you have property owner's liability insurance then you will be able to meet any cost to cover the damages caused to a member of the public. Such insurance includes the cost of hospital treatment, ambulance and the like. Property liability is usually found with a homeowner's policy for private property owners. However, if you are involved in running a business, any claim for liability would be covered under your public liability insurance.

Professional Indemnity Insurance

Indemnity insurance is for those who are involved in the business of selling their knowledge or skills. This insurance provides protection for your business if any client or third party makes a claim for loss or damage as a result of your negligence in some or all services that you provide. Your legal costs will also be covered. There are many professions that require indemnity insurance due to their professional authorization. These include accountants, architects, insurance brokers, solicitors, financial advisors and mortgage intermediaries. Consultants, PR agencies, advertising agencies and designers also sometimes choose to have this type of insurance.

If you receive liability insurance benefits, you can protect yourself when any of your clients or any third party makes a claim for any damage caused by you to them or their property. Liability insurance covers you not just for the claim that a third party makes but also for the legal proceedings that are involved. No matter whether you are running a business or not, you may opt for liability insurance to protect yourself from third party claims.

Professional liability coverage is a real need these days. I'm not sure if there's any professional liability insurance for the health care industry professionals.

Total Comments: 15

Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 10:22 pm Post Subject:

I don't see why there wouldn't be. Professional negligence and similar covers are available to any number of professions, why not health?

I'm sure doctors and the like have malpractice insurance and similar other covers - what sort of work were you thinking of?

Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 06:32 am Post Subject:

what sort of work were you thinking of?


I'm not considering the doctors only..what about the nurses and other attendants? I think they should also have some form of professional liability coverage.

Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 06:44 am Post Subject:

Sure there is... I have two claims currently for an Optometrist (actually, the company that he works for).

Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 05:48 am Post Subject:

I have two claims currently for an Optometrist


tcope, that's surely interesting!
If I'd opt for the nursing profession, do I need to ask my employer about such coverage?

Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 06:14 am Post Subject:

Yes, professional liability insurance is available for individuals like nurses, physiotherapists, opticians, chiropractors and other health care technicians. The different medical facilities and blood banks would fall under this category.

Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 05:41 am Post Subject:

There is another class of professional liability insurance that serves the health care institutions e.g. hospitals, Old-age homes, facilities for the mentally retarded, extended care units and other health care related facilities. These are mostly places wherein the patients are admitted for a longer stay.

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 07:21 am Post Subject:

Health care professional liability insurance also serves different clinics and outpatient units which have no such facilities as beds and boards. Such institutions are generally not covered by individual PL contracts and are thus different from the facilities driven by physicians and dentists.

Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 08:33 am Post Subject:

Since different individuals covered under professional liability insurance may have different professions, their insurance rates may also differ from one another. Rates may also vary depending on their policy features.

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:52 am Post Subject:

When it comes to malpractice insurance problems, different health care organizations and doctors have taken the trouble to trudge through such problems since a long time. Such efforts have developed different health care malpractice insurance associations across many states. The aim of these institutions is to create a market wherein such coverage could be offered at a cheaper price.

Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 05:26 am Post Subject:

E&O is not the discussion. Professional liability coverage is.

Here in California, some physician groups have allied themselves into "risk-retention" groups to avoid the skyrocketing cost of malpractice insurance, thanks to the trial lawyers' lobbying efforts to push tort reform entirely off the back burner. They pay the rough equivalent of their malpractice premiums into a pool of money and agree to cover each others risk potential. Kind of like joining an underwriting syndicate at Lloyd's.

But pay particular attention to how tort reform plays absolutely no role in the Obama "healthcare reform" debacle. Why not? Because when they succeed in "insuring" another 20-30 million uninsured virtually overnight (yes, over "three or four years"), there's no plan to come up with another 300,000 physicians to care for them.

Doctors, whether in private practice, or in an emergency room, will necessarily have even less time to spend on patient interaction than they do now, and it's inevitable that mistakes will be made, and the ambulance chasers are already queuing up to file those malpractice suits.

Don't get me started!

(( BTW -- my wife is an ER nurse. She gets professional liability coverage under a group certificate through one of the nursing associations for less than $100/year. Don't you wish E&O was that costly! ))

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