We write a wide range of risks, including:

• Asbestos removal contractors



• Blasting, demolition, tunnelling and other high-hazard construction risks



• Cosmetics and hair-care products



• Fireworks makers, vendors and display operators



• Machine shops



• Pesticide applicators



• Short-line or tourist railroads



• Medical and surgical products and other tough product liability risks

• Occurrence-form available for most risks — claims-made form also available



• Premises, operations, product liability and acts of independent sub-contractors



• Defence expenses in addition to policy limit in most cases



• Bodily injury



• Personal injury, including false arrest, invasion of privacy



• Broad-form property damage including loss of use



• Environmental exclusion — hostile fire form in most cases



• Policy territory excludes U.S. premises and operations and products intended for sale in the U.S.



• Cover for intentional injury in defence of property or persons



• Non-owned automobile cover in most cases



• Incidental malpractice cover for liability arisng from emergency first aid treatment



• Contingent employers liability



• Tenants legal liability — named perils or all risks cover available



• Blanket contractual liability cover



• Your directors, officers and employees included as insureds



• Non-owned watercraft up to eight metres in length



• Automatic 30-day cover for newly acquired companies



• Attached machinery coverage on automobiles



• Cross-liability and severability of interests

• Capacity up to $25 million for most risks



• U.S. and world-wide products risks with suits brought in North America written in our Canadian Exporters program



• Employee benefit liability cover



• Advertising liability cover



• Vendor liability cover



• Employers liability



• Product manufacturers errors and omissions (E&O) cover



• Property, inland marine covers including transportation risks



• Environmental cover for sudden events on a 120-hour form (IBC2313).

• Two skiers were killed and 10 others were injured in an accident on a Whistler Mountain ski lift in December 1995.

  A chain reaction began when a sudden stop caused one chair to slide down the cable, running into another. Some chairs dislodged completely, falling 25 metres (72 feet) into the rocky crevasse below.

  A coroner's inquest recommended that new engineering requirements, safety codes and personnel training may be needed to cope with the latest high-speed lifts now in use in North America.

  No legal claims have reached the courts yet, but we estimate this multiple-injury accident will cost $8 million or more.




• A high-rise office tower under construction in Toronto was the scene of another tragic accident. Three men were riding in a construction elevator attached to the side of the building. The cable failed and the car fell more than 10 floors, killing one worker and leaving two with serious permanent injuries.



• The family of a 10-year-old-girl who lost four fingers in a subway-escalator accident when she was two years old has reached a $601,718 settlement with Montreal's transit authority.

  In 1989, the girl's right hand got caught in a gap between the moving stair and the side of the escalator. Doctors were able to save only the thumb. The girl's mother said that about $150,000 of the award will go to legal fees.

We suggest:

• Even with the best equipment and expert maintenance in place, accidents may still occur.



• Be aware that in some provinces, the regulation of lifting devices is being privatized. Provincial inspectors are being replaced by a system of inspection by qualified independent consultants.



• Inspect and, if possible, retain a copy of the lifting device inspection report.



• Review any recommendations in the inspection report and follow up to make sure they are implemented.



• Even ordinary office elevators attract the risk of serious multiple injuries. Make sure your client has adequate liability limits — up to $10 million for office elevators. For high-capacity lifting devices or other specialty lifting systems, limits of $25 million to $50 million may be necessary.

All the skiers were from the U.K. and Germany except for Mr. Ochoa, a Mexican national. All were experienced skiers and had signed CMH's standard contract, which included a liability waiver.

Mr. Ochoa's family sued CMH and their guides, alleging that they were negligent in choosing to ski at the site where the avalanche occurred and asking the court to set aside the signed liability waiver.

The case went to trial in Vancouver in September 1995 and lasted six months.

In September 1996 the court ruled that neither CMH nor its guides were negligent, and upheld the plaintiffs assumption of risk and the liability waiver. This is probably the most expensive defence expense ever incurred by a Canadian insurer for an individual bodily injury lawsuit.

The case arose from a March 1988 armed hold-up at the jewelry store. The store owner pressed the hidden alarm button monitored by ADT. A central station employee saw the signal but did nothing for 10 minutes.

The jeweller sued ADT to recover the value of goods lost during the robbery on the ground that the jewelry could have been recovered if ADT had responded promptly.

ADT argued that even if they had responded more promptly, the thieves would probably have escaped. They also said that their contract limited their liability to the annual service cost, or $890 in this case.

The lower court judge found that ADT had breached the contract and that this breach was the proximate cause of the plaintiff's loss. He also ruled that the exclusionary clause in the monitoring agreement was "unreasonable and unconscionable," so not enforceable. The plaintiff was awarded $50,000.

The appeal court upheld the trial judge's finding that the defendant had breached the contract but overturned the trial judge's ruling that the liability limitation clause should not be enforcible. The court accordingly reduced damages from $50,000 to $890.

Nine years and five months elapsed between the original hold-up and the appeal court verdict.

The action was dismissed. The plaintiff had been required to sign the waiver separately, and it was witnessed. He was sophisticated enough to understand its meaning and it had been sufficiently drawn to his attention. The words "howsoever arising" were broad enough to include liability for negligence. The plaintiff was not in any position of vulnerability in signing the waiver and it was not unconscionable.

A company sued the consultant, alleging it was negligent in preparing an environmental report for the previous owner. The report included the statement "accepts no responsibility for damages, if any, suffered by any third party as a result of decisions made or actions based on this report."

The report, which admittedly contained negligent mis-statements, had been shown to the plaintiff before the sale. The plaintiff had no direct dealings with the defendants.

The action was dismissed by the trial court, and that verdict was upheld on appeal.

Class actions have become a powerful weapon in the armoury of the plaintiff's bar and advocacy groups. We believe that class actions are the most serious new litigation exposure that our clients and their insurers will face in the next century.

Class actions are designed to provide better access to the courts for victims of negligence and other torts, who would otherwise be unable to seek compensation because of the high cost of litigation. They are expected to make for efficient, effective use of the court's resources and to level out the perceived imbalance between smaller, less well-off plaintiffs and the large defendants who are better able to finance a defense.

Inevitably, this means that there will be more individual claimants pursuing legal actions, so the aggregate cost of litigation will rise. Individual claims will cost more to settle because many other claimants can hitch a ride with the most motivated litigants.

Several provinces now permit class actions. Canadian lawyers have embraced class actions with startling speed. Here's a round-up of the recent class-action activity we have seen:

• As many as 400 Canadians who received defective teflon-coated jaw implants will receive $10 million after a BC Supreme Court approved the settlement in July 1999.

  The US-made implants were withdrawn in the US in 1991. Patients received the implants for a condition called temporal mandibular joint disfunction. The defective meniscus, a bit of cartilage which cushions the jawbone from the skull, is removed and replaced with a disc to alleviate pain. The disc worked quite well for one or two years but over time, it sheared into thousands of particles that triggered an auto-immune reaction" Mr Klein said.

  Similar class actions were also filed in Quebec and Ontario. The $10 million settlement covers all three class actions.




• Within two days of the e-coli breakout in Walkerton, Ontario, which cost at least 12 lives, lawyers from competing firms were canvassing residents for class actions against responsible parties.



• A Montreal woman has announced a class action lawsuit against Hydro Quebec and the Quebec government for losses sustained by customers during the January 1998 ice-storm.



• A class action lawsuit has been launched against six Ontario clinics linked to an outbreak of hepatitis in the Toronto area. Public health officials said that an EEG technologist with a highly infectious case of hepatitis B was probably to blame for the outbreak. The lawsuit seeks $105 million in damages.



• Within 24 hours of a Toronto commuter train accident in November 1997, a class action seeking unspecified damages was commenced on behalf of two legal secretaries who suffered cuts and bruises. Almost 100 passengers were injured when an empty train collided with another train standing at Toronto's Union Station.



• A class action has been launched against the owners of a Hamilton, Ontario recycling plant that caught fire in July 1997. Firefighters fought the blaze for several days. The lawsuit, commenced on behalf of local residents, alleges that harmful chemicals were released in the fire and that local residents should have been evacuated until the fire was brought under control.

  The recycling plant and the City of Hamilton's fire department are named as defendants in the suit.




• A Vancouver lawyer has commenced a class action in B.C.'s Supreme Court against Servier S.A., a french pharmaceutical company. The suit alleges that Servier's fenfluramine diet drug, sold in Canada as Ponderal, could cause lung disease.



• Toronto's transit system is the main defendant in a class action arising from a subway train crash in August 1995 which killed three people and injured 50 others.



• A class action filed on behalf of up to 15,000 Ontario homeowners alleges that domestic gas furnaces are hazardous because plastic venting systems are failing prematurely. The suit seeks more than $50 million in



• Canadians for Mercury Relief, a patient's advocacy group, plans to launch a class action lawsuit over mercury in dental fillings. The group is seeking compensation for millions of Canadians who have had fillings containing mercury. The group is still trying to work out whom to name in the suit.



• A Quebec Superior Court judge has approved a class-action launched by 500 victims of the 1996 Saguenay flood. The $20-million lawsuit was launched by Jeannine Arsenault, a resident of nearby Lac Kenogami. It targets the Quebec government and the Societe immobiliere du Quebec, which owned and managed three dams for the provincial government. The dams overflowed during the flooding. The government has argued that is not responsible for the damages because the Societe owned the dams.

Unfortunately the operator forgot to disarm three spare units he had stored in an adjacent storage area. When the remote-controlled devices were set off, the spare units also ignited, starting a fire in the storage room. The banquet hall filled with smoke, and the wedding guests were quickly and safely evacuated. The fire also knocked out an adjacent electrical panel for the kitchen, so the caterer was unable to complete the meal. The wedding was ruined.

The banquet hall lease agreement expressly prohibited the use of candles or indoor fireworks. Damage to the banquet hall, the caterer's lost revenue and compensation to the bride and her family cost $132,972 and legal expenses were almost $8,000.

The boy's family commenced a legal action seeking more than $360,000 in damages. We secured a settlement for $36,093 plus $27,222 for subrogated medical expenses and $6,188 in defence costs for a total of $69,503.

The teen's mother found the device, and mistaking it for a candle, put it away in kitchen drawer with other household candles. Two weeks later, the teen's father also mistook the device for a candle, and lit the device in the house. The father was burned and his hands were seriously and permanently injured. We agreed to pay $29,000 plus $4,643 in legal expenses.

The information in this web site is intended to be general in nature and should not be construed as specific recommendations, nor as a substitute for the advice of a professional insurance broker who is familiar with a clients particular exposures or circumstances.

The coverage summary should not to be construed as an insurance policy or the interpretation of an insurance policy.

Liability claims for this class of business may often follow months or years after the event itself. Failure to report an incident promptly may jeopardize the insurers investigation and defence of a subsequent legal action. To avoid the risk that individual losses may be denied as a result of late reporting, we would encourage you to report all such incidents promptly.

Please note that if your policy is written on a claims-made form, the policy contains certain restrictions that limit the reporting of losses after the policy has expired.