Understanding Action Over Coverage and Why It’s Crucial

It’s never a good day when someone is injured on the job. Pain, recovery, and costs are all part of this terrible process. However, the hurt on the surface may not be as far as things go, including for an employer.

While a worker is obviously entitled to workers’ compensation for being hurt on the job, there’s another type of payout that might be required in certain instances — action over. What does this mean? What will it cost? How can you protect against it? Let’s break this all down to help you understand action over and why it’s crucial to have insurance coverage for it.

What is Action Over?

To put it simply, action over is a legal term for the act of suing a third party that is allegedly related to why someone was injured while performing a job. As an example, think of someone falling and injuring their back because a stool broke under them. At first, they’ll be entitled to workers’ compensation for the direct injury. After that, though, they may also file a case against the stool’s manufacturer, claiming that there was some defect with their product that caused it to fail and injure them.

As another example, someone hurt while working construction for a specific company would likely be able to sue the contractor at a site for allegedly creating an unsafe work environment by not taking the precautions necessary to prevent the injury. In this case, things get a bit more complicated for the employer. Assuming that the contractor has a contract with the same company employing the worker, the company would then be forced into a position of fighting its own employee in court and potentially paying out to them for injuries. All in all, not a good scenario no matter how you look at it.

What is Action Over Coverage?

Losing an action over a case can mean losing a large sum of money. Not only that, it could permanently damage your relationship with one of your employees. These reasons and many more are why it’s so important to be covered in the event a case like this is initiated. Thankfully, action over coverage is offered by many insurance companies now to help protect people in the event something like this were to happen.

Why is Action Over Coverage Important?

Like any other form of liability insurance, you would be able to have the insurance company payout in your place for action over the case. Though it is possible for some more general insurance policies to cover action over cases, many specifically try to exclude this type of coverage. As such, having specific liability protection in the event action over the case is started against you, especially if your business is in a high-risk field, becomes crucial in keeping your business afloat. Neglecting to properly insure yourself against these kinds of situations can mean big losses, plus time wasted battling your insurance company itself trying to make them cover something if they decide your general policy does not include something.

Conclusion

Action over coverage is a crucial part of keeping your business safe, especially if your employees operate in environments that might easily lead to injury. Relying on general liability coverage does not always cut it, so taking the extra step of purchasing more coverage is frequently a much smarter decision than leaving things up to chance. Don’t let yourself be uninsured any longer. Get some action over coverage today by heading to InsureYourCompany.com and learning how we can help you keep your business safe and secure with many different types of coverage.