Straight From The Source Blog by Higginbotham Insurance

How safe is your supply chain? Even if a company works hard to maintain a high level of safety and quality, its reputation can suffer if suppliers and contractors are not equally cautious. Some issues may even result in expensive lawsuits and regulatory fines. Selecting the right companies to do business with can be a minefield. Contractors and suppliers also face difficulties, possibly being underbid by competitors that cut corners. This is where contractor qualification vendors step in to help.

Author: Andrea M. Palmer, JD, Director of Coverage & Litigation, Higginbotham

Contracts aren’t considered leisurely reading. The language used in indemnity provisions can be complicated. Terms like “indemnitor” and “indemnitee” aren’t used in everyday language. To help you navigate the complexity of indemnity provisions, let’s put the risk transfer language in common terms.

There’s only one way your business can run on all cylinders, and that’s with every employee at work and functioning at full capacity. Unfortunately, that’s not always possible. Injuries and illnesses happen. And when you have employees off work due to injury, it can put a real strain on your operation and your bottom line.

Parties to a contract often rely on their insurance coverage to protect them, and sometimes others, from liabilities they assume in the contract (aka “contractual liability”). Often, the parties aren’t concerned with knowing exactly how their insurance policy will provide this coverage; they just want to know that there will be coverage. Standard form Commercial General Liability (CGL) policies include contractual liability protection, which provides coverage for most liabilities assumed in most contracts. Parties to a contract can increase the likelihood of having contractual liability coverage by requiring the party assuming the liabilities to include the other party as an additional insured; in some contracts both parties are assuming liability and therefore both parties are (or should be) required to include the other party as an additional insured.

Ask business owners to name their least favorite things about running a business, and OSHA inspections will probably be somewhere on the list. Nobody likes that kind of surprise or that kind of scrutiny.

With the holiday season in full swing, it’s company party time and a great opportunity to celebrate with your team. As you plan this year’s event, be cognizant of what you hope to achieve and what you hope to avoid. We’ve all heard the stories about those who drink too much, say too much or do too much at company parties. Today, in the age of social media, employees can instantly share their colleagues’ bad judgement through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, placing your company’s reputation at risk. And then there are more serious exposures such as sexual harassment, food poisoning and driving under the influence. These risks can quickly turn your festive event into a costly regret. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. Some careful planning can ensure that your company party goes off without a hitch – and without a hit to your bottom line. 

One of the joys of the trucking business is the ability to travel across the country and experience the beauty of different roads from coast to coast. However, this also means you must prepare for various types of driving conditions. Whether you're driving through a busy metropolis or sparsely populated country roads, there are heightened risks to be aware of in winter. Here are some good practices to keep you and your cargo safe in the winter months.

Sometimes the insurance requirements of a contract aren’t in agreement with the indemnification provision. This can result from a simple error due to edits by multiple parties, or it can be an attempt to circumvent anti-indemnity statues – or even bury a provision that, in effect, is a broad-form indemnity. As we’ve discussed in previous posts, many states have enacted anti-indemnification statutes, making certain broad-form indemnifications void as against public policy. Any provision that attempts to circumvent an anti-indemnity statute will also be void, and a conflict between insurance and indemnity can lead to litigation. In this edition of our contract review series, we review some of the statutes that address those provisions and study examples so you can identify such a provision when you see it in a contract.