You may never use liability insurance cover, but you shouldn’t live without it. Liability is like that, it doesn’t happen often, or may not happen ever, but in the event it does it could cripple you and your family.   

So, when cutting costs on insurance make sure that you don’t exclude liability cover as the range of incidents for which you could find yourself coughing up are actually very broad, warns Gari Dombo, Managing Director, Alexander Forbes Insurance.

Examples of where liability insurance is needed:

• Your pet bites a friend’s child causing disfiguration or worse.
• Your gardener falls from a ladder becoming a paraplegic.
• Your armed response company shoots and paralyses a neighbour while responding to your alarm. Most security contracts transfer legal liability to you.
• Your child accidentally kills a visitor with your handgun.
• You seriously injure a passenger during a motor accident.
• You spill petrol while refueling your boat and set other boats in the marina alight.
• Building at your home creates dust damaging a neighbour’s expensive interior, or depriving them of the use of their property or business.
• You cause a fire that burns down the house you are renting.
• Your leaking septic tank contaminates a neighbour’s borehole water.

Huge liabilities

“Since liability awards arising from these sorts of every day occurrences can be so huge you should buy the highest limits of cover that you can afford” advises Dombo.

• By way of illustration, the following awards have recently been made by South African courts:
• The Road Accident Fund paid R10m to Harry Wessels, a 38-year old farmer who suffered severe brain damage following an accident.
• Doctors Zambakides & Stepiene were sued for R33 million by the Nel family following their child’s brain damage.  
• A couple and their son were ordered to pay R1,1m to a man whose leg was amputated after being accidentally shot by the son (then under 16) who was using the couple’s gun without supervision.
• A vehicle accident victim who suffered permanent brain damage was, along with this father, awarded R10m, and R200 000 for medical expenses, from the Free State MEC for Public Works Roads & Transport.  

Compared with these kinds of figures, paying as little as R20 a month for R10 million worth of liability insurance cover is actually quite cheap, says Dombo.

Defence costs are included within the liability sum insured. So, even if you’re not held liable by a court, your liability insurance will still cover your legal fees. But you should seek direction from your insurer when you receive a written claim from the third party (or attorney) as your insurer has the right to conduct your defence, says Dombo.