The Trick-or-Treater’s will be knocking on your door tomorrow night! It’s your responsibility as the homeowner and insurance policy owner, to prevent losses. Halloween is a huge liability exposure. By decorating, turning your porch light on, and handing out treats homeowners invite some of the most common, and most expensive liability claims.

　To make it simple, any injury that any person might suffer while their feet are on you property can be considered your liability. Take a few moments and consider these important issue before inviting the neighborhood to knock on your front door:

If you trip over the garden-hose everytime you walk to the front door, than don’t assume the little monsters own’t nearly break an arm when they trip over something on the way to your door. Be sure to move any obstacles from the sidewalk, driveway, and entry of your home.

Use only outdoor approved lighting and don’t place any lit candles outside of your home.

Be sure the area is well lit, and keep your lights on all night. Remember no matter how great the candy was at your house, Tricksters are still interested in causing problems. The best targets are dark homes where no witnesses will see the mischief!

Eggs are very difficult to clean off the side of your house, and even worse when they hit the hood of your car. If possible park you car in a garage Halloween night!

Be sure your pets are safely kept inside the house on Halloween. Not only are they at great risk of being frightened or hurt, but a dog bite claim is not what most of us expect when we’re handing out candy.

You might be able to save some money on your child dental costs, in many cities local dentist will pay by the pound for candy turned into to their office. But, that’s a downer to me so I prefer to Eat It All Up!

Most of all, be sure the treats you hand out are safe and individually wrapped.

The program, which is intended to allow employers to assess safety risks of potential driver-employees, will begin in December, according to the FMCSA. Drivers will have the ability to verify their driving history and correct any discrepancies.

 The information available to employers will include roadside inspection history, compliance review results, enforcement data, state-reported crashes, and motor carrier census data.

Drivers first must give written consent to have the records released.

“Increasing transparency by allowing greater access to driver safety records will greatly improve the hiring of safe commercial vehicle drivers and help raise the safety bar for professional truck drivers,” said Dave Osiecki, vp of safety, security and operations with Washington-based American Trucking Assn., in a statement.

How much excess liability a business owner should carry on her Umbrella policy depends on several factors. First, are there any contractual requirments from clients, vendors, franchisors or suppliers? It is common for these to require certain liability limits in order to do business.

Another factor a business should look at is the limits that other, successful companies in their industry carry. While this is certainly not an exact method for determining limits, it does provide a good guide to start with.

The final, and in my opinion most important, factor a company needs to look at in accessing how much excess liability insurance they should have is the amount of equity the business has. If you own a motorcyle dealership where the bank owns the building, the manufacturer owns all the inventory and all you have is $100,000 in tools, it doesn’t make much sense to carry a $5 million Umbrella. Conversly, if you own the building outright, own half of the inventory and $1,000,000 in tools and equipment, you would want a large Umbrella policy to protect your assets.

In the event of a lawsuit against a business, one of the first things the plaintiff”s attorney is going to do is suponea the business’s insurance and financial records. A cynical person might suggest that the lawyer will look at  the company’s assets versus their  insurance limits to determine the size of the lawsuit.

Some claimants supposedly too disabled to work post locations and dates for their upcoming sports competitions or rock band performances, boast of new businesses launched, and include date-stamped photographs of their physical activity, investigators say. Others have openly bragged about fooling their employers with Monday morning workers comp claims for injuries that occurred the weekend prior and away from the workplace.

For years, fraud investigations have relied heavily on video and audio recordings of disability claiments engaged in physical activities. Now, a lot of the scammers are providing the investigators the videos they need to sucessufully prosecute the case.

Social networking sites increase the efficiency of video recording and reduce investigation costs by eliminating time spent searching for claimants and waiting for them to engage in behavior that contradicts their claim, said Howard Schneider, president of Schneider Associates, a private investigative agency in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

To start with, investigators lacking a photograph or address to ensure they have identified the right claimant they were hired to tail might find a picture and address on MySpace, Facebook or other sites such as Twitter or classmates.com, investigators said.

Then there is the listing of physical activities.

In one recent case involving a Los Angeles-area warehouse worker who filed a work-related back injury claim, traditional surveillance of his home proved fruitless, Mr. Schneider said.

So investigators found the claimant’s Facebook site and learned about his participation in bowling tournaments and a bowling alley he frequented.

“It just amazes us how much information people provide,” Mr. Schneider said.

An investigator visiting the bowling alley found a large banner congratulating the claimant for rolling a perfect game and the date he rolled the game.

“Which was post date of loss,” Mr. Schneider said. The investigator video recorded the banner for evidence and later video recorded the claimant competing in a tournament. To do so, the investigator melded among spectators video recording their friends and family participating in the tournament.

“It was the easiest surveillance we ever had to do,” Mr. Schneider said.

To those of us who play by the rules, this is a great use of technology not a case of “Big Brother”. Fraud is one of the biggest causes of increased work comp insurance rates, and those increases get passed down to everybody in the form of higher consumer prices and lower wages.

Commercial property insurance rates increased during the first six months of 2009. This marks the first time in over five years that businesses have seen their property insurance premiums rise. The increase is due to the global financial crisis and past catastrophic losses.

Pricing for properties with little natural catastrophe exposure, however, remain competitive, and policyholders should expect renewed competition and modest downward pressure on rates into 2010, Chicago-based Aon Corp said in a U.S. Quarterly

Liability insurance rates for most industries remain competative and could even see some decreases for most industries. Directors and Officers Liability insurance for financial institutions remain an exception, with sharp price increases, shrinking inventory and stricter terms.

Hired auto liability coverage will pay for damages to a third party, on behalf of your company, if you cause an accident or an injury to someone while you are driving a rented car or “non-owned” vehicle for business. For example, if you rent a car to visit a client, and cause an accident on the way there, the person you hit will look to your company to pay the damages. Without this coverage, your company may have no insurance coverage for a rented car.

The same scenario applies if you have an employee run an errand, or visits a client in his or her own car. When the employee causes the accident, the injured party is going to look to your company to pay for damages since the employee was using the car on company time. This can also apply if you casually ask a friend to pick up office supplies for you the next time they go to the office supply store and an accident occurs!