Traditionally, people have presumed that Personal Umbrella policies are only for the wealthy. While umbrellas do provide additional liability coverage to help protect your assets, they typically add coverage that may be excluded under the standard homeowner’s insurance policy. One such coverage is Personal Injury, which includes disparaging and damaging comments and actions taken against someone via social media.
Social media has grown extensively over the past 10 years. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin…. Do you know anybody who’s not using one or all of these social networking platforms?
Most of us also have heard stories of people posting something on their Facebook account or sending a tweet that they later regret. It’s possible one of your children has been in this situation. Maybe they’ve been on the receiving end of some disparaging on-line remarks. As a parent, you can’t control/monitor all of your children’s electronic communications. There have been numerous stories reported over the last several years regarding “cyber-bullying”. Victims are left at the very least embarrassed and at the worst, some incidents have led to tragic endings. It's scary stuff.
Homeowner’s insurance policies use a term called “personal injury”. The phrase,“personal injury” in an insurance policy meaning injury arising out of one or more of the following offenses:
- False arrest, detention or imprisonment
- Malicious prosecution
- The wrongful eviction from, wrongful entry into, or invasion of the right of privat occupancy of a room, dwelling or premises that a person occupies, committed by or on behalf of its owner, landlord or lessor
- Oral or written publication of material that slanders or libels a person or organization or disparages a person’s or organization’s goods, products, or services
- Oral or written publication of material that violates a person’s right of privacy.
For our purpose here, let’s think for a moment about the fourth offense, and how the inappropriate use of social media might increase the exposure to a personal injury claim.
Most standard homeowner’s insurance policies exclude personal injury, but an endorsement is typically available to add the coverage, and better yet, most personal umbrella policies do pick-up the personal injury coverage even if it’s not available on the underlying homeowners policy.
By having the personal injury endorsement and/or having a personal umbrella doesn't mean you automatically have coverage for every possible situation. There are exclusions to the personal injury coverage and some of them deal with whether or not you knew that your communication would violate another’s rights and inflict injury, or that you knew what was being communicated was false.
Every situation is unique, but in this era of the internet, cell phone cameras, and social media sites, the probability of being faced with a personal injury lawsuit are much more likely than they used to be.
To learn more about personal injury caused by social media, and how a Personal Umbrella Policy can protect you from such an offense, contact HJI’s Personal Lines Manager, Doug Lefeber.
608-252-9647
Doug.legeber@hausmann-johnson.com
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