Professional Liability Insurance Webinars

Hall & Company has scheduled 5 more free educational webinars for you and your firm’s professional staff. The schedule of webinars is posted for you to review so you can set aside time to attend. You can also register online to receive the webinar announcements.

Design Professionals Contract Clauses

In spite of whether the client claims ownership of the drawings, the initial task for the design professional is to request permission from the client to contact and discuss the design with the prior design professional. In addition to this request, the contract with the client should address this matter clearly.

The contract should include clauses that:
1.describe how the drawings were obtained and given to the design professional;
2.provide a warranty from the client asserting that the drawings are indeed owned by the client, not subject to any copyright, or have been made available with a license from the copyright holder to use the drawings; and
3.contain a clause where the client agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless the design professional from any claims arising out of copyright infringement.

If the client declines either permission to contact the original design professional or agreement to the contract clauses, the design professional needs to candidly consider whether or not it is in his best interest to continue working with this client. Otherwise, considering that copyright ownership lasts at a minimum for a person’s lifetime plus an additional 70 years, the design professional could very well find himself defending a
copyright infringement lawsuit sometime in the future.

For more resource information on Professional Liability Insurance, please refer to Hall & Company’s Risk Management Library.

It’s a Matter of Copyright

Architectural drawings are without a doubt copyrighted material; no matter whether there is a copyright stamp or not. Whereas the origin of the plans may not be apparent, one detail is clear: If the work is not of your original design and you work off them, you may well be positioning yourself for a copyright infringement claim in federal court.

Property & Casualty Insurance Coverage

A well designed PC coverage package for an A/E firms has a number of features, including:
• Blanket Waiver of Subrogation
• Blanket Additional Insureds with primary/noncontributory status
• Per Project Aggregates extend the GL limit to apply separately to each insured project
• Enhanced limits and features on property coverage – particularly for equipment used off premises

Katie Morris joined Hall & Company in 2011 with over 10 years Property & Casualty insurance experience, please contact her at (800) 597-2612 for more information.

Professional Liability Insurance Coverage

Travelers Insurance Company has designated Hall & Company

as the wholesale agent for Property & Casualty insurance coverage for any and all agencies that do not have a direct appointment with their company. As such we are the wholesale agent for about fifty retail agencies nationwide for the Traveler’s program.

Why One Broker

As specialists in providing professional liability insurance to architects, engineers, land surveyors, and environmental consultants, a good number of our 3,000 customers purchase their PC coverages through their local agent or continue to purchase this coverage through the agent they had for their PLI coverage before they switched to us. We encourage our customers to let us quote their PC coverages concurrent with their PLI insurance renewal for a number of reasons, including:
• It allows a single point in time each year to make insurance purchase decisions.
• It allows us to issue one comprehensive certificate of insurance each year at renewal to all of your clients that require a current certificate on file with them.
• Only one certificate is needed to represent all of your coverages on new project contracts that you enter into throughout the year.
• It allows us to provide more comprehensive contract reviews for our clients and verify that all of the project’s required coverages for both PC and PLI are in place.
• Some insurance companies offer discounts for having both their PL and PC coverage with them in-turn saving our clients even more on their insurance premiums.
Also our expertise as A/E insurance specialists provides us the experience to know the proper coverages and limits for our clients. We are able to write insurance in all 50 states (limited in Alaska and Hawaii). We have in-house underwriting authority so your quote turnaround time is quick. Architects, engineers, surveyors, and environmental consultants have unique requirements for PC coverages and we offer a number of companies with well designed coverage programs and competitive rates.
A well designed PC coverage package for an A/E firms has a number of features, including:
• Blanket Waiver of Subrogation
• Blanket Additional Insureds with primary/noncontributory status
• Per Project Aggregates extend the GL limit to apply separately to each insured project
• Enhanced limits and features on property coverage – particularly for equipment used off premises
Let us show you what we can do for you and how much easier it is to have your PLI and PC coverages with a firm that specializes in insuring design firms.

It’s almost time!

In order to present the most current information in our presentation, we are inviting all Design Professionals to take part in a brief survey. The results of this survey will be presented during our presentation on Tuesday, June 14th. If you have not signed up for the webinar please do so now. This webinar is approved for CE Credit from AIA!

Take this survey now!