Event Insurance & Chickenstock

[spook]

Greetings guys, I realize its been a while since I've been on especially to post a question, but here goes:

May 15 we just had our 1st and possibly last Chickenstock here in Oxford, ME. I love the two a year, people love the 2 a year!
Unfortunately this year, it was mentioned that I would need Event Insurance so that if anything occurred, bit, pecked, fall or you name it, a law suite would be my responsibility where I am the organizer. This is a very scary thought seeings I personally do not want to lose my house or what little we do own.

I asked our stores manager that the property was TSC responsibility and I was told that "No, it was my event, my responsibly". Well as I did my homework, they have Event Insurance for weddings, funerals, pool parties and the list goes on. Wow.
So as I agreed to pay for said insurance this time, at a hefty price of $244.00 and I don't sell. We did this year in hopes to recoup money, but it paid for the food (I'm so glad of that).

Can anyone help me understand why this is developing, how your local TSC's are handling such events and just to mention that I'm aware of charging folks to recoup money, but these are supposed to be free events for the community to come enjoy, sell, trade etc. I don't want to charge anyone, nor do I want to see this becoming a financial burden upon Bob & I.

Thank you in advance!

 

[spook]

anyone?

 

[jerseygirl1]

I was wondering when this would come up. Our TSC doesn't hold events, so I can't help there, but I was curious about it. Now I know why they don't have them.

 

[spook]

Thank you so much for writing. At Agricultural Fairs bird owners now/last few years must have proof of insurance on your birds. Either a Ag type insurance, or home owners rider! And to "remove" birds from your property, they should be insured. Guess there was an incident with a bird and a law suite followed! What else do we expect from our chickens/horse/cow/dog etc etc.

 

[garp94]

I have no wonderful words of advise, just voicing the sad thought that we really do have too many people [I won't just blame the tort lawyers] looking to make a buck out of any little mishap.

Thank-you for letting us [at least me] know the events cost the organizers more than just your time. Maybe they should become like a flea market where the vendors pay a fee, or just publicize that you need other people to chip in a few dollars to keep this going, and the first year you don't get enough donations to cover the insurance is the last year it's held?

Good luck and i hope you manage to keep them going. I didn't make it up that weekend, but i eyed it and hope to get off to go nextyear.

 

[kelseygirl707]

Well, I can tell you that I am hosting this years Northern California Chickenstock, at my In-laws Equestrian Center, and because the Equestrian center is considered a Business, they are required to either have event insurance, or have everybody sign a waiver. So since we are trying to do this on a low budget, we have opted to have everybody Sign a waiver, otherwise my Inlaws would have to charge to use the property, to cover the insurance. I don't know about TSC's policys, but I can tell you that we Northern Californians looked at several venues including a fairground, but it was going to cost quite a bit to have it at the fairground, again because of insurance. From what my inlaws told me, Businesses are legally obligated to have insurance for events, or opt for the waiver, releasing all liability off the owner of the property.

 

[jerseygirl1]

You are holding raffles and a 50/50, right, to raise money?

 

[spook]

Thanks for all your interesting points of view/knowledge. It is a sad day when people think they "deserve" money for their suffering while doing something really foolish and the incident may have been their own fault. Its not the Lawyers I blame, instead I blame our neighbors, you and me, I am not single anyone nor implying, but if there was not a call for those lawyers, then we wouldn't have that many, IMO.
Anyways, I believe in some states that if you do "penny" sales (chinese auctions) are illegal unless your vying for a benefit, please I don't know for sure, and each time we have done raffles, etc no one was interested and often did not make enough for gas money to get to the event.
Sigh.
What are folks finding prices to be, or the least expensive company to receive Event Insurance from. You don't have to write amounts, perhaps its not a good thing, but I wonder if there could be a company to help us out. There must be some people here that could have answers on a non-legal, non-insurance company person that could suggest options or how to shop, or what to look for in a company to help those of us that need Event Insurance.

 

[Chickie'sMoma]

when i was a member of the last remaining Jaycee chapter in NH we had to have 'event' insurance on practically everything that we hosted on someone else's property that invited the public. we used the fairgrounds to host the yearly Night Before the 4th fireworks and it cost us about $1400!

not to mention we had to pay for trash disposal, rental of the grounds, rental of the police officers' time, time for the fire dept to sit there in case of emergency, medical people to be on site for medical emergencies, parking people, and a whole lot of other things people didn't think about that our group needed to pay for to help entertain them! and then they thought they should be getting into the grounds for free!

i think in NH the TSC have us sign a waver at some and others we have to abide by NH Dept of AG rules for selling but i don't think they worry about 'event' insurance. either BlazingSaddles or Chickn would know more about that stuff since they are the main people to set them up. i think people should be responsible for themselves!

 

[darbella]

I was going to set up at a fair once to sell my hand sculpted jewelry and they wanted each vendor to pay an additional insurance fee on top of the booth rental. Needless to say, they only ended up with 1/4 of the vendors they had spaces for. I know when I owned a store I had to have insuance that was also for liability and I know that other buisnesses have to also. I mean what if someone got hurt walking past the swap by a piecs of debris that was on the ground and had nothing to do with the swap, the store would have to be liable for that too. I know that there is a really good ins. co with extremely reasonable rates in Mass. called ARC ins. co. and they cover NH but I am not sure about Maine. I had a policy on my store with a million dollar liabitliy limit and it was less than 500.00 for the year. There are companies that offer one day event ins. for reasonable fees, you may just have to shop around. Try to Google it.