Why You Need Employment Practices Liability Insurance
EPL insurance provides financial protection from a variety of employment suits and complaints. It also covers defense costs. We connect you with attorneys experienced in employment law. They focus on your defense so you can focus on your business.
Discrimination and sexual harassment are the most common complaints. However, EPL insurance can also protect you from lawsuits and administrative actions filed for wrongful discharge, defamation, invasion of privacy and other wrongful employment acts.
Are You Prepared?
Workers filing discrimination charges against employers are at record high levels, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.¹ One third of these nearly 100,000 charges were made against small businesses. The high level of employment lawsuits against all employers is not surprising, given that one in four Americans believe they are victims of job discrimination.² Employers of all types and sizes are sued by employees. Jury awards and out-of- court settlements can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Add legal fees and management attention, and the total cost can be staggering.
Most business policies do lot cover employment suits
Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI) could protect you from the financial consequences of an employment lawsuit. Your company is like a family, and it is hard to think of anyone filing a complaint. But roughly 100,000 administrative actions were filed with federal regulators in recent years, and the number is growing. An additional number went to state authorities or directly to court.
Did you know that only one employee can subject you to liability under federal and state employment laws?
By the time you reach 20 employees, most significant discrimination laws apply to you 3. Many state laws contain lower size thresholds. There is no minimum size employer for common law actions such as defamation and invasion of privacy.
Small Employers Can Be Sued Too
Claims like these happened to jewelry stores, museums, and similar organizations. All of these lawsuits involved small employers5.
Jewelry store fired store manager in retaliation for complaining about staff mistreatment.
Plaintiff Verdict: $60,000
Retailer prohibited employee from using wheelchair on the job, and subsequently fired him.
Plaintiff Settlement: $35,000
Museum sued for national origin and religious discrimination upon firing Muslim worker after 9/11.
Plaintiff Settlement: $60,000
Supplier terminated 76-year-old employee who alleged age discrimination.
Plaintiff Verdict: $77,000
Pregnant female at investment firm sues for wrongful discharge from refusing to wok on day of office fumigation.
Plaintiff Verdict: $21,295
2EEOC, Private Sector Bias Charges Hit All-Time High (Jan. 2012) at www.eeoc.gov.
3Gen Re’s Employment Practices Liability Jurisdictional Survey, prepared by Jackson Lewis LLP, 2011.
4 EEOC Discrimination Charges at www.EEOC.gov.
5Jury verdicts are from Jury Verdict Research, an LRP Publication Company, Horsham, Pennsylvania.
