Suing culture has taken over the world with more people than ever filing lawsuits against businesses, often for the right moral reasons but occasionally for the wrong reasons too. Protecting your business from lawsuits is paramount. Here are a few ways that you can keep your business lawsuit-proof.
Get contracts professionally written
Any flaw in a legal contract can be exploited by an opposition lawyer. Whilst you can save money by writing up your own contracts, you could save yourself a lot of money in the long run by getting your contracts professionally written by a legal writer or solicitor. Contracts should be given out both to clients and to your staff to legally protect yourself. On a related note, make sure that you’re also reading others’ contracts before you sign them – you can get them checked by a lawyer first if needs be.
Take out insurance
Various insurance schemes can protect you against various lawsuits. Professional indemnity insurance can protect you against claims of malpractice made by clients against you or your staff. Cyberinsurance as provided by companies such as https://www.marsh.com/us/services/cyber-risk.html can protect against hackers stealing clients’ or staff members’ personal or financial details. Product liability insurance meanwhile can protect against refunds on faulty products that you sell. All these insurance schemes can rack up costs so only take out protection where you realistically think there might be a risk.
Pay for a risk assessment
A risk assessment can help identify places where you could minimise risk within your business. This could be anything from installing burglar alarms to fire safety equipment. Risk assessors can also provide advice on health and safety measures that you may or should be enforcing. Such measures could protect you against a claim from an injured client or staff member. These include something as silly as putting a safety notice about hot water on a coffee machine or putting a wet floor sign on a clearly wet floor.
Oversupply safety equipment
Make sure that there is always enough safety equipment to go round. If you require safety gloves or hard hats, oversupply these in case some get lost. Protect staff when manual handling by supplying equipment to make handling easier such as lifts from sites such as http://www.saxlift.com/. Offer a pair of gloves next to a sink for washing up in case someone has an allergic reaction to the washing up liquid.
Train your staff
Training your staff can prevent accidents which in turn prevents lawsuits. This won’t just protect you against your staff, but against clients too. Training your staff not to trail cables whilst hoovering could prevent someone tripping over a cord and suing you.
Have a solicitor on call
You cannot take preventive action against all claims. In such situations, it’s useful to have a solicitor on call that can help you provide a solid defence. This will hopefully protect you against any claims that are on unreasonable grounds.
