How much liability insurance does a private bartender need?

Answer 1

The answer, like the answer to all liability limits qustions, depends on two factors: 1. How much can a private bartender be successfully sued for? 2. Is there a premium point (for payment of increasingly higher liability insurance coverage limits) beyond which you are willing to assume the risk of surrendering all your possessions to a Plaintiff and declare bankrupty to cover the unpaid portion of a suit? Alcohol distribution to the general public, and the resulting potential for bodily injury caused by impairment, brings an almost unlimited potential for liability loss. So the answer to the first question can range in the 10s of millions. If you choose excessively high limits, the premiums for the private bartender enterprise might make the business financially unrealistic. Avoiding the enterpirse as financially unrealistic is not necessarily a bad choice, especially if you have ever seen a businessman faced with the negative result in question #2, after choosing lower limits - or no insurance! I've seen underinsured business owners of seasoned years forced to protect some few remaining assets by homesteading in Florida. I've seen their ex-wives, long since remarried and living in another state, sued because her ex-husband's limits were insufficient, and at the time of their divorce, when she settled the property to her husband, she "knew or should have known" the "terrible" condition of the property that, 8 years later, resulted in a loss. I do not make these things up. Court decisions are made by juries. Place the burn victim or the greiving widow and her four children on the stand, and suddenly even "negligence" and "fault" become practically irrelevant. In such realities, the question of "sufficient limits" become very clear. My choice is to protect myself to 90-95% of the maximum forseeable loss, and if I can't afford it, then I can't rightly afford to be in the business I've chosen. Less responsible choices exist, which opens the question - feared and unasked by thousands of people as they hire bartenders every day - What are your liability limits?