Gary Saunders

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November/December 2009 Should you have a distracted driver policy? The short answer is yes. The usage of cell phones, GPS's, and other electronic devices has been in the news to a great extent. The media has made a lot of noise on this issue. Most of us already have policies relative to drinking and driving. What about eating, putting on makeup, MP3 players, not wearing seat belts,.... etc.? All of these are things, which all of us often see others doing while they are driving down the road, can cause auto accidents. Therefore I am recommending a Driver Safety Policy for each of you to implement. For a sample policy click: Sample Driver Safety Policy . You can put this in your hiring packet for anyone who will be operating a company vehicle. Just the policy alone is not enough! You need to bring it up at least a couple of times a year. Plus, you need to enforce it when someone is caught violating it. Do You Have A Pollution Problem? Hmmm... do not be too quick with that NO! Let's ask ourselves a couple of more questions. Do you have anything to do with: rental property, gas fired hot water heaters, or furnaces? If you answered yes to any of these then you have a pollution concern. Why? Well you can send a thank you note to the 5th Circuit Court. The center of all this is carbon monoxide. Consider that just about every, if not every, general liability policy out there has an absolute pollution exclusion. This means that any liquid, solid, and/or gas which could be considered a pollutant is excluded from coverage. This covers a LOT of ground. Failure to properly vent hot water heaters and/or furnaces can cause carbon monoxide to go into a building or house. In the past the courts have pretty consistently held that carbon monoxide in a commercial situation was pollution but in a residential situation it was not. However, a decision by the 5th Circuit Court has changed that. Carbon monoxide is now a pollutant in residential situations as well. I am already having insurance companies deny claims citing the courts decision. What should you do? ● If you are in the rental side of things, consider installing carbon monoxide detectors. Of course some kind of follow-up is needed in terms of changing the batteries, etc. ● If you are on the contractor side, think about what can you do to be very very sure that your men are double checking the vents of these systems. ---Plus, consider not working on systems which are in such poor condition that they will be a problem in this area no matter what you do. ---If one of your men, finds a system in poor condition and must walk away from it, have a written notice which you can give to the building owner/homeowner. Request a signature on a simple form which shows that you provided the property owner with the warning. If the customer will not sign, have the service man write a note to that effect on the form, sign and date it himself. Insurance is available for this as well as other pollution problems, but a good procedure to prevent these claims must be your first risk management step. If you want a quote, give me a call or drop me an email. Carbon Monoxide poisoning seriously injures people, so this is a very critical thing. The New I-9 If you have not switched over to the new I-9, RIGHT NOW would be a good time. The feds have driven most of us a little be crazy with the updates on this form. Several times over the last 2 years new versions have come out only to be withdrawn on the actual effective date, and on one occasion, the day after the effective date. The new version is good until August of 2012. I want to encourage you to go ahead and change to the new form. After all when you look back a few years from now, you will not remember why you failed to change to the new form. The form is available in the Resource Center here on my site or you can just click here: I-9 . If you have not read my article on completing this form, please go to the Resource Center and read it. How Bad Is It? A prisoner in jail in Denver, CO discovered problems with security at the jail. He managed to escape. The first time he was caught after just a few days. However, the Sheriff's department was not able to figure out how he managed to get out. On the man's second time in a cell he was put higher up in the jail building. Again the man managed to escape. However, this time he was so high up that he had to use the old "tie the bed sheets" together trick in order to scale down the outside of the building. Apparently he was not very good at the bed sheet thing because the man fell and hurt his back in the process of the second escape. Captured again, he is now suing the Sheriff's department claiming that their making it so easy to escape caused him to injure his back. Anyone thinking of an alternative dispute resolution to this thing????

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