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No. Have never been sued. But if you’re a vendor/contractor you should have your own insurance. Treat yourself like a business.
Why they ask for it to be a requirement: It’s sometimes required by their client within their MSA’s.
I’ve heard of someone who was very recently. A CCO and a CEO were both sued. 👀
…
Just to be clear I’m referring to freelancers being sued by The agencies who bring them on
i have been asked to provide proof of insurance in a few instances and treat the request seriously and evaluate it (like a business) based on the request and a few questions:
1. am i being hired on 1099 as a contractor or w2 as a temporary employee or w9 as a company/supplier?
2. proof of health insurance, especially if i declining their coverage as a w2 hire, no problem i will share.
3. proof of liability insurance and /or workers comp insurance i will share if i am hired as a supplier and i am hiring others as part of my contract.
4. proof of errors and omissions insurance? working for an agency and creating work for them and their client is usually work for hire and they retain ownership of the creative and e&o insurance needs to be on them.
5. proof of production wrap insurance? if i am being hired to be the production company the. maybe, but this can be provided by the agency, the client or the production company and the more productions you run each year the less expensive the policy is so having me cover this and passing it along as part of the project/ contract will be more expensive as i am not a large scale production company.
last note: consider who is doing the asking. is this a large multinational company? then i generally will only share that i am covered by my own health insurance. is this a very small local or regional agency with a small client? then maybe i will provide greater coverage but i am also going to be paid for more than just my time.
If you’re being brought in on assignment and they’re asking for proof of insurance, it’s most likely because they want to limit their own liability. Seems a little odd though because you would think they wouldn’t want to expose that you were independent unless they had an impenetrable dnh/dnc agreement.
It’s all about labor law and nothing about claims they would have against you. Workers comp and general liability is a standard to hire someone as a vendor vs W2.
General liability insurance is also different from professional insurance. The first has more to do with property or bodily damages you may cause at a workplace. (You accidentally start a fire, you pay for it.) This is pretty common if you are a contractor doing business as your own company. And honestly not that expensive. I do have this, it cost me around $200 per year for a $2mm policy.
Professional insurance is for if someone sues you for lying about something( fraud or stealing someone else’s IP), being negligent, causing irreparable harm to the companies reputation, and that kind of stuff. Much more uncommon for advertisers because it likely not worth the time and cost to sue you unless you really mess up. But more than that, as long as you operate as a passthru corporation/entity. You can only be sued for your companies assets. Which for me is a 4 year old Macbook Pro… So I don’t carry this.
There are other nuances, but most contracts will specify which kind they require. I’ve negotiated how big of a policy they want me to carry as well.
Wow. Is this a higher up thing?
Oh these weren’t freelancers. They were sued by another agency.
Business insurance is just a procurement standard that some companies have. Not a big deal.
I doubt you would ever be sued by an agency. In fact, I would be very surprised if there were not a binding arbitration clause in your contract to avoid lawsuits.