Roofing Contractors Insurance

Some roofing contractors feel like they do a good, conscientious job and don’t need liability insurance. Is roofing contractors insurance an unnecessary ‘extra’? Absolutely not!

Too many people remember the ‘good old days’ where doing a good roofing job insulated you from the mistakes of others. In today’s business world, it’s about doing your job well, getting paid as you deserve, and making the client realize just how much your service is worth. In addition you must be safety conscious to protect yourself from things that are out of your control. During roofing operations you need to worry about your work area including the building being worked on. This building may have flaws in the foundation or wall infrastructure. The added stress of roofing activities could cause flawed structure features to fail, resulting in massive monetary damage. The building owner in this situation is faced with a decision: eat the cost of damage caused by their own failure to get needed maintenance and repairs done or sue their roofing contractor hoping a judge will force the contractor to pay for repairs that are not his fault. Too often the side with the better prepared lawyer (instead of the side in the right) will win this contest. Roofing contractors insurance protects contractors from this litigation because the client will now be trying to win a judgment against an insurance firm with lawyers on staff whose specialty is this very type of case – this means the roofer can worry about roofing operations instead of worrying about legalities.

The second big factor that is out of your control is your employees. Now we all screen our employees to the best of our abilities, but no screening process can guarantee that only good, conscientious employees are hired. Some bad employees are good actors. Even a contractor who has been fortunate enough to hire nothing but good employees is vulnerable to lawsuit through its employees. These lawsuits are not limited to the standard ‘professional hazard’ lawsuits (someone tripping over your supplies, being hit by a falling object, etc.), there are all sorts of frivolous lawsuits commonly brought against contractors regardless of whether the contractor had any part of the offense or not. These lawsuits are worse in a way because they don’t require hard evidence. This makes the skills of one’s lawyers even more important. Once again, someone protected by roofing contractors insurance is buffered from these lawsuits because of the skilled lawyers that all insurance companies keep on staff.