Description

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This seminar is a fast-paced look at the personal and commercial lines insurance issues that have been created in the gig economy. The first section of the seminar looks at standard definitions and characteristics of the sharing and the gig economy, chiefly by using examples. Of course, the behemoth in the group is Uber. It is also the paradigm for the gig and sharing economy. Private drivers use their private vehicles to act like a taxi service. Apps such as Touro permit private drivers to use their vehicles for rental, much like Avis or Hertz. The sharing economy is not limited to vehicles, however. In a similar vein, homeowners can use their residence as a hotel by renting it out for short periods via Airbnb or VRBO (Vacation Rentals by Owner).

To discuss the insurance ramifications of this, a bit of history and background is in order. The phenomenon of the sharing economy is not completely new, at least from the perspective of the homeowners’ insurance community. For decades, business owners have operated their businesses from their home. Traditional insurance forms have broadly defined “business,” which has resulted in a fairly consistent attempt to exclude that risk from the scope of the standard homeowner's policy. Conceptually at least, this is the forerunner of attempts to exclude sharing economy risks from traditional personal lines policies, such as the auto and homeowners policy.

With this background and history in place, the seminar then turns to an examination of the particulars with regard to both the personal auto policy form and the homeowner's form. In both instances, the forms of the Insurance Services Office are used as a basis for discussing exclusions, endorsements, and recent changes in the baseline form. 

In both sections, time is devoted to how the available insurance from the platform connects with and potentially interacts with the coverage available to the homeowner or driver. 

The final section of the seminar changes focus. It looks at issues connected to the gig economy from the perspective of an employer in a more traditional business model. Simply put, can gig workers be held to be employees, despite the efforts of employers to treat them as temporary workers and therefore independent contractors? This section examines some case law and also some employment law developments that may influence the question not only from the perspective of the commercial liability policy but more particularly the worker's compensation laws.

As a concluding exercise, the seminar asks a hypothetical question about whether a restaurant or an app such as DoorDash, can or should be held liable when a driver has an accident while delivering food. The idea behind the scenario is to ask the question about not only insuring the needs of the restaurant as well as the driver but also asking about the underlying liability itself and the prospect that there may not be as much insurance available generally to claimants as would be expected or anticipated.

Approved for 2 NJ CE Credits