BRYAN'S BLOG

Bryan’s Blog: Providing Indemnities in Contracts

Last week I ran a training course on Liabilities, Indemnities, Warranties and Insurance.  The most important lesson I learned (I always like to learn when training!) is the incredible breadth of expertise required to cover this topic.

I had senior legal counsels, senior insurance buyers and senior risk managers on the course as well as a range of less experienced lawyers, risk managers and insurance officers.  Understanding how liabilities may arise, the intricacies of the wording of indemnities, the potential minefield that is the implied warranties under Australian Consumer Laws and how tricky it can be to be ensure you don’t get too smart and void your insurance cover along the way all came to the fore as issues that each have incredible depth.

Ultimately the trick is being as certain as you can be as to what you know and what you don’t know.  When you don’t know, there are many sources of advanced expertise.  In this day and age of the information highway, the answers and the experts are not too far away.