Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI)
EPLI coverage is intended to protect businesses against claims from workers claiming that their legal rights as employees have been violated. In the past few years the number of lawsuits filed by employees against their employers have been rising. Even if the claim is frivolous, without coverage, you’ll still have to pay defense costs. Don’t get caught paying out of pocket because you don’t have coverage, it is very affordable!
Often coverage can be added to your Business Owners Policy, Package Policy, Professional Liability Policy, or a standalone policy. Often the standalone policies have the broadest coverages but not always!
Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI) has two main parts:
First Party: Covers allegations from employees against other employees and/or the employer itself based on discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination, retaliation, and other specified “wrongful acts.” These are commonly known as First Party Coverages
Third Party: Allegations of specific discrimination or harassment against the employees and/or the employer from third parties with whom the employees come in contact during conducting business on behalf of the organization. This is commonly known as Third Party Coverages and is often hard to control and not included in some policies!
Common types of employee lawsuits:
- Harassment
- Discrimination
- Wrongful Termination
- Violation of Family & Medical Leave Act
- Wrongful discipline
- Deprivation of Career Opportunity
- Wage/Hour Disputes (Important but not standard on most policies!)
Take the Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI) Self-Evaluation from Philadelphia Insurance below to see how your coverage stacks up. Not sure if you have coverage, or if your coverage is inadequate?
