Insurance question
Hello, I would like help with two insurance questions I have.
1. When an architects consultant and the architect are working to review something on site and the consultant gets hurt and trips and falls partly because the architect came his way, whose and which insurance will kick in to claim for this?
2. If a common person slips and falls on a floor that is wet and slippery in a building designed by an architect , and blames the architect for it, which insurance will help the architect against this claim and why?
Can someone help answer these question please?
Thank you.
-
Regarding the slip and fall - usually when someone slips and falls and wants to sue, they sue the owner of the property - that information is usually pretty easy to find and that's who you'd assume is responsible for the slippery floor. They don't generally look up who the architect was to sue them.
So, once the owner gets sued, the issue goes to their property insurance. The issue then becomes whether or not the property insurer will try to recover damages from the architect, claiming that they're somehow responsible for the slippery floor.
Take a look at the waiver of subrogation language in A201 - this provides protection for the architect (amongst others) for situations like this, when the claim should be covered by some sort of property insurance in place at the property.
Chris Hopstock RA
Black Spectacles
ARE Community -
Valerie, thank you for your comment. Could you please elaborate a little more on why these are answers are right?
1. Is it the architects workers compensation or the consultant firm's?
2. Why is it general liability and not professional liability? in this case the person is indirectly claiming that the architect didn't do a good job with the flooring and thats why he slipped right?
Just trying to understand how insurance works in different scenarios.
Please let me know. Thank you!
-
Yashwitha, I can't tell you with absolute certainty what insurance would cover both of the scenarios you've outlined; however, I can tell you that the previously provided answers are incorrect (edit: aside from Chris').
- Contractor's commercial general liability insurance (CGL) is the primary insurance carried by the contractor (with the owner, architect, and architect's consultants named as additional insured) for situations of bodily injury, property damage, and other conditions related to means and methods of construction. Injuries that occur on-site should be covered by the contractor's CGL. Worker's compensation, on the other hand, is intended to protect employers from being sued for negligence, in exchange for coverage of wage replacement and medical benefits for their employees.
- General liability insurance protects against incidents that arise from nonprofessional aspects of the insured's practice, like slander or a client getting injured inside your office. It would not cover an architect in this scenario. If an architect were somehow found liable for an occupant slipping on a wet floor in a completed building (which I cannot imagine), it'd fall to the architect's professional liability (aka errors and omissions/E&O). For this to happen, the architect would have to have been found grossly negligent in some way...which, again, I can't imagine. More likely than not, any claim made against the architect would go nowhere (as an aside, I'm uncertain how privity works in this scenario). More realistically, this would fall to the building owner's property insurance.
-
Hi all, let's summarize: CGL pays for construction related accidents, or situations of bodily injury, property damage, and other conditions related to means and methods of construction. Worker's comp pays for injuries that are job related but not construction related. In this case, the consultant gets hurt and trips and falls because the architect came his way - this injury is not related to means and methods. (No direct contributions are made by employees for worker's comp vs health insurance). So worker's comp for case 1 and general liability for case 2.
-
- Contractor's CGL is not limited only to means and methods; it typically covers incidents of parties tripping and falling on site, as described in the original scenario. Worker's compensation, as explained previously, is paid out to employees of the insured party as a means of protecting the employer from getting sued for negligence.
- Claims by third parties that arise from the architect's provision of professional design services are specifically excluded from coverage under an architect's CGL policy.
Refer to chapters 16 and 17 of AHPP for further details; Chapter 16.2 Insurance Coverage for Business and Professional Liability covers the bulk of this information. For more information regarding contractors' CGL policies specifically, refer here and here.
AIA Contract Documents channel on YouTube also has some very good content on the topics of risk management and insurance for all contracted parties.
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
6 comments