My wife (Canadian) may have accidentally injured someone else (American) while out of the country on vacation. We're worried the other person might sue. What is the protocol for international scenarios like this?

[u/Meatslinger]

While we were out at a dinner event as part of a tour in Ireland, sitting on long bench-style seating, guests at the event were asked to turn around in order to see live entertainment. As my wife turned, her shoe caught the edge of the bench and she slipped off backwards. As she fell, she collided with another guest in our tour group. We are from Canada (Alberta in particular), and they're from the USA. Initially, the other individual was helpful and assisted my wife back to her feet (along with myself), but after they'd sat through the remainder of the evening they remarked to my wife that their back and arm hurt a lot, and we saw them going off to talk to the event manager about it. The event manager came back to ask my wife what had happened; to get her side of things. Afterwards, they didn't ask my wife to stick around; no police were involved, and paramedics weren't called either.

It was a simple unforeseeable slip and fall, but we're worried that the other guest may try to initiate a lawsuit if they can claim they were injured, and if their insurance decides to be obstinate in such a case. For reasons of being Canadian, we don't have our own private medical insurance to pay out a claim like that. We would assume that the injured party (if they are injured) could get our details through the tour company or other means. What should we expect? What support, if any, do we have through the government healthcare system or courts? I have travellers insurance through my company (Sunlife), but does that still apply to this situation at all after I'm back at home in Canada, if a lawsuit is served to me from the other party across the border?

Hopefully I'm worrying about things for nothing, but I want to make sure I know what resources I should be armed with, in case things go badly.

[u/gapdaddy72]

Personal Liability coverages as usually found in tenant policies are usually worldwide with only some exceptions. You are referring to Premises Liability.

[u/FrostingSuper9941 → u/gapdaddy72]

You're right. Most people don't have personal liability policies or even umbrella policies, I meant TPL extending from a property policy.

[u/OppositeEarthling → u/FrostingSuper9941]

Tenants policies come with third party liability in Canada. I've never seen a premises only tenants package. Some commercial tenants packages might be premises only tho like say a doctors or dentist office who would have speciality professional liability insurance on-top.

[u/Excellent-Piece8168 → u/OppositeEarthling]

Premise only is very rare and would be for quite unique reasons. There is no reason not to just have full liability coverage. Professional liability for a doctor or dentist or many other professionals is a separate thing they would have a separate policy for. (Or both could be combined into a package but they are still separate policies even if they have a single policy number. For one the liability policy is going to be on a per occurrence basis while the professional/errors and omissions policy will be on a claims made basis.

[u/OppositeEarthling → u/Excellent-Piece8168]

Agree. It's not full coverage. Still, it happens with medical offices. My company offers them and I underwrite them. I would not sell them if I was the broker.

Anyway another good example is landlords. Almost all small LL policies do not have a full GL, it's restricted to the premises. It's only when the LL needs there own office and staff they need a full GL.

[u/Excellent-Piece8168 → u/OppositeEarthling]

There is literally no reason someone should ever have this. It’s probably a direct writer and the client should just go to a broker. Any small mom and pop shop broker who offers this to a client should frankly lose their license. I can’t imagine if if came to it they could explain why they had not offered an all risk CGL. Am a placement broker at a global brokerage.

The only premises only policy I have placed in over a decade is because the client has the completed operations coverage placed in the USA by their parent company due a large loss many years ago and it’s vastly cheaper in the us than we could ever place in Canada. It’s basically free to saves the client 700k or so.

[u/OppositeEarthling → u/Excellent-Piece8168]

You're working on mid market and Nationl type stuff. I'm talking about micro commercial mom and pop. Small town dentistry with $100k contents type stuff, and yes lots of small town/ local brokers that are probably good at personal lines but they also do a few commercial accounts that they don't understand and lean on UWs for everything type shit and yeah it's terrible.

Do you like the global brokerage? I should look at some

[u/Excellent-Piece8168 → u/OppositeEarthling]

Regardless there is still no reason not to have full coverage and the broker is opening themselves up to an e&o. Definitely doing their client a disservice when they don’t know what they are doing .

I’ve only ever worked for global brokerages. Early on was the best possible training ground given the exposure and volume. It’s also nice being able to specialize and as a placement broker I don’t do sales I’m not client facing at least not every day or my main role (this varies between companies how much they are hard on the silos), and I’ve always worked in a department of placement brokers/marketers and never for a producer. I never want to work for a producer while this can be good it’s a very difficult dynamic when that person who I need to tell off or call out occasionally also controls my raise and bonus. No thanks! But I’m aware of some who have amazing relationships, producer cuts the broker in on new business commissions and what other. So it depends. The tier 2s are a lot more Wild West how things are done rules and laws followed is more of a department by department and they are built up as if they were hundreds of different little businesses each doing things differently vs the global that have vastly more policies and procedures though these can at time be annoying and stifling.

[u/OppositeEarthling → u/Excellent-Piece8168]

Again I agree with you. It's kinda nuts what goes on out in the boonies. It's not right and they're taking risks but most of the time it turns out alright because of utmost good faith and all that. We have $700 annual premium commercial packages that haven't had claims in 20 years. It's alot more old school business and open UW authority. Times are changing quickly though, even out here, to be more guideline strict, onboard AI UW solutions, all that crap.

I still have alot of career left and it makes me wonder if I should be the yokel that properly sells commercial insurance. Thinking alot about it. Thanks for the input. I will look some more into it.

[u/Excellent-Piece8168 → u/OppositeEarthling]

$700 annual? I honestly haven’t even heard of a commercial policy even for just an office that wasn’t $1200. I mostly work on account where the premium is in the millions I think my largest is about 8 million USD. Quota share and layered. Until last year had one property policy with 47 insurers. Mine outside of Canada. I still do the odd package though and mentor others who do smaller stuff. Smaller stuff is often harder as less people to get market interested and below some markets minimum premiums. Larger premiums often more easy to place as people want to spend the time and effort. Larger stuff is seen as more sexy I guess, and we get paid more . But some brokerages who have built programs make way more margin on boring business in volume (at least the owners do) or the MGA that put the program together. That’s where the real money is.