What to Do If You Receive a Public Liability Claim as a Small Business Owner?
by Susanna Phillips
If you receive notice that there has been a claim against your company's public liability insurance it's important that you act appropriately to ensure you don't put your business at risk. Here are the steps you should take if you receive notice of a claim.
Gather All Your Internal Facts
Based on the data that you have in the letter, you should gather any accessible internal information. For instance, if you have the dates of the event, it can be useful to work out which staff members were on call that day and contact them to get their statements or records of the event, gather any internal reports on the incident and make sure that any footage is preserved. The longer you leave it before collecting this data, the higher the chance that information will get misplaced or forgotten before the claim moves forward.
Get in Contact With a Lawyer
If there is any contention over whether or not you or your business is liable, it can make sense to contact a lawyer and ensure that all the communication with the claimant is appropriate. You want to ensure that you don't inadvertently admit to being liable or make the situation worse in your verbal or written communications with the claimant. Make sure that everyone involved with the case knows that all communication should come through your office and vetted by the lawyer to avoid any confusion.
Your lawyer may also have some advice on some ways to change the way that you do business so you can avoid risking similar claims. This can include posting warning signs or changing the way your staff interact with the customers. You should ensure that your staff follow these instructions so that you can avoid future claims.
Stay Calm
While it can be a stressful situation, it's important that you stay calm. Any comments that you make to employees or social media can come back to bite you if the case ends up in court. In most cases, even if the claimant has a successful case, the amount will be paid by your insurance company and will not result in a significant loss to the company.
By approaching public liability claims with a positive attitude and using the right team, your claim should be resolved as quickly as possible, allowing you to get back to focusing on the main job of running your business.
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About Me
Hello. I'm Mark and I am the manager of a successful modelling agency. It is my job to ensure that our models are well cared for and generate positive publicity for the agency. Sometimes that can be quite challenging and I spend a lot of time liaising with our legal team. From clients who refuse to honour contracts to models who are facing charges themselves, I am constantly dealing with legal issues. Over the years, I have become quite familiar with a range of laws and legal processes. My friends and family consider me to be a veritable fount of information when they have legal questions. I have decided to compose this blog in order to address the issues I most commonly deal with. Please browse at your leisure.