Working in the US - workers comp insurance

[anonymous-user]

If we were to send one of our UK guys over to the US to do some consulting do we need to take out a 'workers compensation' insurance policy? We have full employers liability insurance (mod'd to allow US based claims) and US travel insurance.

The site isn't our own, it's the clients. If he were to injure himself on their site through no fault of his own doesn't their own insurance cover that?

I'm asking as we had a near miss that brought up the question about coverage. I'm wondering whether I should try to get some sort of US based workers comp in place even though our UK insurance broker is saying it can't and shouldn't be done. Their opinion is that if the client is liable the client pays end of story. I think they're being too UK-centric and we may have a gap in our coverage...

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Workers Comp is just their name for Employer's Liability. If the employee is working in the US but is British and employed by the UK company, then your UK EL cover should be fine. Obviously any claims made will be in the UK courts under UK law.

But as your broker says, any injury will probably be a claim against the US firm he's consulting for, under their version of public liability (injury to non employees), assuming they are negligent

Edited by TwigtheWonderkid on Monday 22 March 16:49

[anonymous-user]

Had some interesting feedback from a US lawyer colleague of mine. Works comp law means all employers should be covered by their employer. Yes, we should claim against the owner of a site if they are to blame. However, if they don't have insurance we're liable to pay our employee. The assumption is that we sue the site owner for the costs to recoup.