GL: THE OTHER WHITE MEAT
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Wm HaycookSPOTLIGHT DEC/00

Many of these columns have been devoted to Property insurance but there is also General Liability  [GL] insurance to consider.  Remember, a good commercial package policy provides both Property and GL coverage.

Think of GL as the insurance equivalent of the other white meat.

You buy Property insurance because of what someone or something might do to your property  - set it on fire, steal it, lose it, damage it, break it, destroy it.  With Property claims the insurance company pays you.

You buy GL insurance because of what you or your property might do to someone else.
With Liability claims, the insurance company pays someone else.

Referred to as a third party, that someone else is often, but not always, a patron - your theatre organization and the insurance company being the first two parties.

The purpose of GL insurance is to protect you in case you injure someone else or their property because of your negligence.

Negligence is the failure to do, or not do, what a Reasonable Person would do, or not do, under similar circumstances.  This is called the Reasonable Person Standard.

When you encounter a stop sign, a reasonable person stops.  If you run the stop sign and injure someone you are negligent.

If your lobby carpet is torn, creating a potential hazard, a reasonable person would replace or repair the carpet.  If you fail to make the repairs and a patron trips and falls, you are negligent.

Failure to anchor a portable step unit properly, failure to clean up a water spill, placing an off-premises sign too close to the road, failure to remove snow, failure to isolate or remove broken seats, plugging too many units into a single socket, failure to provide adequate lighting in the parking lot, failure to secure lighting instruments with safety chains – these are all potential acts of negligence that could result in injury to someone else or damage to their property.

Whether you own your own performance space or your rent someone else’s premises for your productions, you need to have adequate General Liability coverage.

It is recommended that your theatre group carry General Liability insurance with a limit of at least a $1,000,000.

If you regularly use school or municipal facilities you know from experience that almost all such facilities require you to have at least this much GL insurance.

If you own your own theatre, even a simple black box facility with under a hundred seats, you should have at least this much GL insurance.

A million dollars may seem like a lot.  After all, most GL claims are settled for considerably less.  However, this is the minimum amount you ought to have in order to protect your theatre group from these kinds of third party claims.

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