Professional Liability Insurance (also called Errors & Omissions or E&O) policies contain duties required of the insured like any other insurance policy. Most of these duties are common sense, such as cooperation. However, professional liability policies tend to be more specific and not all policies are the same. Different wording may lead to different conclusions when faced with a specific fact pattern from a potential or actual claim.
These provisions are some primary duties:
- Cooperation
- Notice – claim and potential claim
- Do Not Admit Liability or Waive Rights
In particular, notice provisions concerning potential claim situations vary. For example, some policy provisions require notice of a potential incident and in some policies notice of incidents is optional. Additionally, some notice provisions are very specific about the information required to be included with the notice and some are less specific. See our prior post on Timely Notice (here) for additional considerations.
The duty requirements in a professional liability policy can also lead to conflicts. An agent or broker may want to address the pending situation issue with a client to ensure a strong and continuing relationship, but attorneys caution against this. An article (see here) referring to Insurance Agents/Brokers E&O policy provisions provides some perspective on this.
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