Talk:Liability insurance

Untitled
I have completed the wikification of the page. If you don't think it does the job well enough, feel free to pitch in. -David91 08:09, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

concrete examples
This page is too abstract. would it be possible to add some concrete examples? For example, if one person has liability insurance and gets in an accident and damages another car, but his car also gets damaged, does the insurance pay only the other party or would they compensate the car damage to the owner of the liability insurance? Also, would it be possible for the insurance company to claim that the accident was not an accident, but a malicious attempt by the liability insurance holder and thus not pay for the damage caused?

US position
The addition of an element specific to the U.S. is most useful. Howe bbvn bv bn bver, I am a little unclear why the public policy is to make the existence of liability insurance inadmissible. If I was a prospective litigant, it would change my view on whether to sue if I knew that the defendant had no insurance. Obviously, a successful judgment as to liability is worthless if the defendant has inadequate private funds out of why to pay damages. The U.S. public policy would seem to operate as a deterrent to litigation against private citizens or small companies or large companies whose solvency is doubted because the plaintiff may be suing a "man of straw". And lawyers may not recover their costs!!! I'm probably being very stupid in not seeing the immediately obvious answer. Could you hep me out please. -David91 05:26, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

(If you're still reading this page) I think your problem may be the definition of "admissible." Certainly, a plaintiff may discover whether or not their defendant has insurance (and may probably use judicially ordered discovery to do so once a lawsuit has been instituted). The issue is that a litigant may not admit evidence of insurance at trial as evidence that the defendant is guilty, i.e. may not say "Look, jury, the defendant doctor has medical malpractice insurance-- clearly, he's a crummy doctor if he's going to pay an insurance company to handle all the claims that are going to be brought against him." I've added a link in the article to the relevant section of the evidence law article. QuixoticKate 16:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

What's more, a jury must often determine the amount of damages that the defendant owes to the plaintiff. Thinking "oh well, he's got insurance" may cause a jury to drive the monetary award up - beyond what one would deem appropriate, but for the knowledge of the insurance company's "deep pockets" ... Omegadrone 00:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Public liability - example of North Korea
For example, in North Korea, those found without proper liability insurance face punishment ranging from seizing of property, flogging, or political exile

North Korea is a Stalinist state. The idea of everyone in a communist state requiring liability insurance is ludicrous. Even were it true, this information is about the most useless example imaginable, as North Korea is unlike any other state on the planet. I fear 192.231.106.2 added this as a joke (on 21:43, 9 April 2008). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.9.6.138 (talk) 16:10, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Subcontractors
Regarding this line:

"Additionally, client contracts often require technology subcontractors working on-site to provide proof of general liability and professional liability insurance."

I question the characterization "often". In my 10 year experience as a user interface designer, usually working as a subcontractor, I've only been asked to provide my own general liability insurance just once. Last week, in fact. Perhaps developers need this more than designers do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.231.237.174 (talk) 00:36, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Vocabulary
This page doesn't say what those various cover options it describes are called. You don't buy a policy for in-case-an-employee-is-injured cover. It's called something. All that vocabulary is missing, making this page a lot less useful. It's also a lot harder to integrate into the wikipedia framework, since the relevant jump-off links aren't here.99.11.160.111 (talk) 10:20, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Too many negations
Can somebody who understands this please reformulate this sentence? It has so many negatives (twice 'avoid' plus endangering, which also turns the sense): "To avoid endangering an insured to gain a remote possibility of avoiding paying on the policy, the duty to defend obligates the insurance company to settle reasonably clear claims." --maye (talk) 22:30, 25 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Not sure how to clean up the sentence in the article, but I'll use an example here to explain the meaning. Plaintiff sues defendant for $2,000,000 but offers to settle for $1,000,000.  Policy is for $1,000,000.  Claim is pretty cut and dried and any reasonable person can see that it is a valid claim.  Insurance company won't have to pay more than $1,000,000 since that is the limit of the policy, so they have a financial incentive to fight the claim since settling the claim for $1,000,000 costs them the same as losing and paying the policy limit, but potentially winning the case before a jury will cost them much less.  The problem is that doing so is adverse to the interests of the insured (i.e. the defendant) because the jury might award the plaintiff more than $1,000,000 leaving the defendant on the hook for any amount awarded above the policy limit, when a settlement would have left the defendant with no financial liability.  As a side note, there is also a public policy interest in this as a plaintiff who was harmed by the defendant's actions may be suffering financially as a result of the defendant's action, and may have a very serious need to receive the settlement or judgement as soon as possible, and an insurance company decision to fight a clearly valid claim further harms the plaintiff since trials can sometimes take years to schedule, when a settlement could have been processed in a few days or weeks. Etamni (talk) 08:13, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Third-party liability section is nonsensical gibberish that doesn't comply with the Manual of Style
Liability insurance by definition is third-party insurance. So it is simply incorrect and nonsensical to categorize third-party insurance as a type of liability insurance. Whomever wrote that (it was apparently inserted in January 2014) doesn't really understand how liability insurance works or the difference between first-party (loss) and third-party (liability) insurance.

Anyone who has actually analyzed uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage in an auto policy (where the distinction between first- and third-party insurance is most important) would not make such an obvious mistake. Any objections before I take out the garbage? --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:46, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

auto insurance
What's the lowest priced company???? Fred Jennings (talk) 16:33, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

History
I would have appreciated some discussion of the history of liability insurance in this article. About the only source I've found online is here:, which is really concerned with employee injury. Specifically I'm wondering if a small unincorporated US company dealing with the public on its premises would, or might not, have been expected to carry liability coverage for personal injury to a customer, in the early years of the 20th century. Was such premises liability insurance even available at that time, and if so, was it widely used? Articles on insurance tend not to mention personal injury, and articles on public injury and death, such as the disastrous 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire, make no mention of lawsuits or insurance. Thanks for any help. Milkunderwood (talk) 07:58, 8 March 2019 (UTC)