What is Employment Practices Liability?
Employment Practices Liability (EPLI) provides a business with coverage against claims by their employee's that their legal rights as an employee were violated. But what does this entail? EPLI can provide coverage for claims including sexual harassment, discrimination, wrongful termination, breach of employment contract, negligent evaluation and others.
The policy would cover legal costs incurred from a lawsuit that is covered under policy whether the company wins or loses the lawsuit. Typically the policy does not punitive damages or fines and also does not cover liabilities that would be covered under another policy such as worker's compensation or employers stop-gap.
The cost of this coverage would depend on your business. How many employee's you have, the type of company, and if your company has ever had a lawsuit against you previously.
I know what your thinking, this would never happen to me! I employ family and friends. But it in fact does happen and a lot more often than you realize. Sometimes it can be even more likely a family member takes offense and files lawsuit. Whether your business is actually at fault or not needs determined through the court process and without EPLI all of that expense is coming out of pocket.
The top 10 types of employment charges handled by EEOC in 2018 were:1
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Retaliation: 39,469 (51.6%)
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Sex: 24,655 (32.3%)
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Disability: 24,605 (32.2%)
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Race: 24,600 (32.2%)
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Age: 16,911 (22.1%)
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National Origin: 7,106 (9.3%)
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Color: 3,166 (4.1%) (overlaps with race)
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Religion: 2,859 (3.7%)
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Equal Pay Act: 1,066 (1.4%)
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Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act: 220 (0.3%)
The EEOC in 2018 has disclosed the resolution of 90,558 charges of employment discrimination, securing $353.9 million for victims of discrimination in private, federal and state and local government workplaces through voluntary resolution and litigation, and $55.6 million for victims of sexual harassment. This doesn't even include the legal fees!
If you want to find out if your current company policy is providing you coverage for EPLI, give us a call today and we can do a review of your current policy for free!
Call us at 614-878-0240 or email us at info@gsp-insurance.com
Information pulled from:
1 https://www.natlawreview.com/article/2019-epli-trends-report-published#:~:text=Top%2010%20EEOC%20Employment%20Discrimination%20Claims%20in%202018&text=The%20EEOC%20filed%20217%20lawsuits,156%20lawsuits%20across%20the%20country.