Brodie Butland JD SSC: Legal Issues in Strength Coaching 2.0

[Mark Rippetoe]

Raising The Bar 2.0: Legal Issues in Strength Coaching | Brodie Butland

[Steven Z]

Hey Brodie,

Cool article. I thought you did a pretty good job of discussing insurance issues, but wanted to make a few additional suggestions:

RE: General Liability and Professional Liability. These lines of coverages are generally meant to be mutually exclusive (as you pointed out). What can happen sometimes if a claim has a bodily injury component to it you can have the GL carrier decline the claim because they say it's a professional liability loss and the professional liability carrier can decline the claim on the grounds that it is a general liability loss. This is a particular issue for businesses like gyms and trainers. One way to avoid this is to make sure the same carrier does both lines. There are several carriers in the industry that do this and that specialize in health and fitness industry (shudder to use that term but there you go). You kind of talked about how you may or may not buy them together, but I just thought it worth mentioning that it really is preferable if you can buy them with the same company (whether two policies or a combined policy it doesn't really matter).

Also I might add employment practices liability insurance coverage to your list. That would protect gym owners from suits arising from wrongful termination, sexual harassment, discrimination, etc. from their employees. You can actually add third party coverage to this and that could be one way you get the sexual harassment coverage you touched on.

There is also Director's & Officers coverage (D&O) which may be worth considering for larger franchises. Gym owners could be sued as individuals for alleged mismanagement of the business even if they're not a publicly traded company. Maybe not quite as important as E&O/GL/WC, but definitely worth considering.