Professional Liability Insurance

[Jeff Mottle]

This is a question for everyone regarding insurance and their place of business.

I work out of my home, in Canada, and I have just recently found out that in order to operate a buiness out of the home, you now require professional liability insurance if you want anybody to write your a home policy. I'm curious, aside from the licenced architects, who require liability insurance, do the rest of the freelancers or contractors on this board have liability insurance? Not that I have a choice, but damn it is expensive! I've been told between 3500-7500 per year! Of course it doen't help that I do all of my business with the US. In Canada you are seen as "sue happy", not that we are much better, so I have to pay for having US exposure.

 

Thoughts, comments, anybody ever been sued for a screwed up rendering?!

[nisus]

Hi Jeff,

 

I am not sure I understand your point.

Do you mean you got to pay a self-employment fee?

rgds

 

nisus

[Jeff Mottle]

Well I guess you could consider it that. It is insurance in case somebody decides to sue you for an error or ommission.

This is worst case scenario, but assume you do are contracted to do a rendering for a meeting where a 20 million dollar decsion will be made. The descsion will be made based upon your rendering. At the last minute your computer goes up in smoke and you loose all of you work, the meeting falls through and a the contract is awarded to another firm. Now you are on the hook becuase it was all your fault . You could potentially be sued.

Or in my case lets say I post a news item, that although I found on a reputable news site, was leaked propietary information. Because I helped to damage a companies product or service I could be held liable by that company.

 

OK, I admit that all of this is million to one odds and I would probably have a better chance of winning the lottery twice in the same day, but that's not how the insurance underwriters see it. They only look at the worst case scenario and as a reuslt of doing this type of buiness I must buy insurance against it. The fact that I also work from my home futhur compounds the situation because Judges are apparently awarding judgments in favor of the plaintif and making insurance companies pay out on homeowner policies, even though it explicitly excludes liability against being sued. All very conplicated I know. I've spent the last three days on the phone trying to figure this all out.

 

Anyway that's the scoop.

[Wojciech Klepacki]

Hi to everyone

In Poland we do call it "occupational liability" (if my translation is correct). It is not necessary to complete such type of insurance - but only in theory. Each architect should do this to avoid potential problems. I mean the freelance architects only, because if someone works for the company than it's the employer business. Nowadays the situation subjects to change. I've heard that such insurance has to be mandatory for everyone. Best regards

[nisus]

Hi Jeff,

 

I still don't know if we have the same things going on here in belgium. In here we have to pay a self-employement fee, but it does not ensure you for anything: just got to pay it. Insurance is something additional.

 

We've asked lots of insurance-companies to insure us against cases like that, but in fact we cannot be insured at all against the example you gave. There is only one thing we could do, which is to write down in your contract that you are not responsible for these kind of consequences.

 

In an extreme case - say we had to make a composition of a building in a photo of the environment - where our client requested us to 'fake' the height of the building (make it smaller!) we could be sued for not telling the truth, but the remedy here is to write these things down in your contract too.

 

It's complicated but at least no one dies if you make a mistake

 

nisus

[John Dollus]

I know I am getting to this late, but in the U.S. computer illustrators are treated no differently than traditional artists when it comes to legal matters. As a painting has no intrinsic ability to cause harm or 'fail' as a product, there is no professional liability. If, however, you are creating forensic evidence by simulating actual events, I would strongly suggest looking into some liability coverage.

 

John D