For business owners, there is an insurance coverage available in the marketplace today called Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI.) It is becoming a critical part of the commercial insurance program.
EPLI protects the business owner in their employment management. This covers areas of sexual & racial harassment or discrimination as well as age-based harassment or discrimination. We are routinely seeing business owners sued for these very issues.
Business owners are almost always shocked when the long-time, trusted secretary suddenly leaves the office and a month later they get the suit papers that say she is suing the business owner for sexual harassment. What upsets them even more is when they call their broker and the broker tells them “we don't have insurance for that.â€
This is what we're seeing, and it is becoming very critical for the business owner. Over the last two or three years, the attorneys have really discovered a new frontier for lawsuits and this is it. It surprises all of our business owners and all of the prospects that we talk to how many specific instances of these cases we can point out. So many times, the business owner (or more often the prospect) will say that they got sued for this and didn't have insurance to cover it.
The one thing that we tell business owners is that the most important piece of this coverage is what we call Cost of Defense. This kind of claim is routinely defensible, but is very expensive to deal with. You can't call an in-house attorney, or even a friend who is an attorney, to defend you in this kind of suit. You must go downtown and find the expert in employment practices, who will likely charge $400-$500 an hour. To defend yourself in cases like this you can spend anywhere between $40,000 to $80,000.
You can win these cases and defend yourself, but the cost is high. These costs are, of course, included in an EPLI coverage, which is one reason it is so necessary.
Get your FREE custom insurance quote today by going to http://whitfordinsurance.com.
