Exercises: Insurance, Permits, and Liability

⚖️ Educational exercises. Where these ask you to evaluate coverage or permit requirements, you are practising a review and verification skill, not giving advice. Insurance questions go to a licensed broker; liability questions go to an attorney.

Difficulty guide: ⭐ Foundational (5–10 min) · ⭐⭐ Intermediate (10–20 min) · ⭐⭐⭐ Challenging (20–40 min) · ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Advanced (40+ min)

Part A: Conceptual Understanding ⭐

A.1. A guest is injured at an event. List every party plausibly named in a claim, and explain why "whoever caused it" is not how claims work.

A.2. Distinguish the four coverages. For each, state what it covers, who carries it, and one thing it does not cover.

A.3. Explain the difference between certificate holder and additional insured, and why the error is so hard to spot.

A.4. What is the difference between per-occurrence and aggregate limits, and why does the aggregate matter when reading a vendor's certificate?

A.5. Explain "coordinate, do not perform." Give four specific actions that cross the line and say what each exposes you to.

A.6. Why is a certificate of insurance "evidence, not a guarantee"? Give three reasons a valid certificate might not mean available coverage.

A.7. Define without looking back: waiver of subrogation, primary and non-contributory, occupancy load, host liquor liability, named insured.

A.8. Why does a certificate request specify a deadline four weeks before the venue's?

Part B: Applied Analysis ⭐⭐

B.1. Audit five certificates. For each, identify every problem and state its consequence.

• (a) Named insured "Copper Kettle Catering LLC"; contract signed "The Copper Kettle"; venue as additional insured, correct language; policy 1 Jan–31 Dec current year; event 12 September.
• (b) Named insured correct; GL $1M/$2M; venue in certificate holder box only; description of operations blank.
• (c) Named insured correct; venue as additional insured; policy period 1 March–28 February next year; GL $500,000 per occurrence.
• (d) Bar service; GL $1M/$2M with venue as additional insured; no liquor liability line.
• (e) Transport company; GL correct; no commercial auto line.

B.2. Rank the problems. Take your findings from B.1 and rank all of them by consequence. Which stop the event, which produce exposure, and which are administrative?

B.3. Build the permit list. For a 200-guest wedding in a public park with a tent, amplified music until 11 p.m., a caterer cooking on site, alcohol service, and a temporary road closure for guest drop-off. List every permit you would ask about, the likely issuing authority, and a plausible lead time. Then write the one-sentence county call.

B.4. The chain, traced. A guest trips over a cable running from a generator to a lighting rig. Trace the chain: who is plausibly named, what coverage each party would look to, and what contract provisions from Chapter 8 would allocate the outcome.

B.5. Alcohol, four arrangements. For each, state the licensing question, the liability question, and what you would need in the file:

• (a) A licensed bar service supplies staff and alcohol.
• (b) The client supplies alcohol; a licensed bar service pours.
• (c) The client supplies alcohol; the caterer's staff pour.
• (d) The client supplies alcohol; two friends pour.

B.6. Price the omission. Build the permits-and-insurance budget line for the Wildrye Farm event at both ends of §9.8's range. Then find the money — the Chapter 6 allocation had no such line and the Chapter 7 contingency has already been drawn on.

B.7. Write the request email. For three different vendor types — caterer, band, rental company — customize the §9.3 certificate request. What differs for each?

Part C: Real-World Application ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

C.1. Read a real certificate. ⭐⭐ Obtain any real COI. Run the eight-point list. Write up what you found, including anything the list does not cover that you noticed.

C.2. Call a broker. ⭐⭐⭐ Find a broker who writes event coverage in your market. Ask for indicative pricing on general liability and E&O for a solo planner, and ask what they see planners get wrong. Write 400 words. This is also the beginning of a professional relationship you will need.

C.3. Call the county. ⭐⭐⭐ Describe a hypothetical 140-guest private-land wedding in one sentence and ask what permits apply. Record: who you spoke to, what they said, what lead times they gave, and how long the call took. Compare their answer to §9.6's table.

C.4. Occupancy check. ⭐⭐ Pick a venue in your market that advertises a capacity. Find out — from the venue, from a certificate of occupancy, or from the fire marshal — what the permitted occupancy actually is for a seated dinner with a dance floor. Report any gap.

C.5. The alcohol statute. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Find your state's provisions on alcohol service at private events: licensing for temporary service, server certification requirements, and whether dram shop or social host liability exists. Write a 600-word brief with sources, and note explicitly where you could not establish an answer. Then have it checked by someone qualified.

C.6. Build the file template. ⭐⭐ All six sections. Include the vendor tracking table with the two-deadline structure.

Part D: Synthesis and Critical Thinking ⭐⭐⭐

D.1. Cross-chapter integration. Chapter 8's contract review and Chapter 9's file are two halves of one process. Build the combined month-three checklist a planner would run once per vendor: what you extract from the contract, what you request, what you verify, and what triggers escalation.

D.2. Critique "coordinate, do not perform." Construct the case that this is defensive practice that makes a planner worse at their job — that the willingness to pick up a tray at 9 p.m. is exactly what distinguishes a good planner, and that liability anxiety produces someone who watches problems rather than solving them. Then respond. Where is the actual line, and how would you brief an assistant on it?

D.3. The verification burden. Verifying eleven certificates, chasing corrections, and tracking permits is perhaps eight hours of unglamorous work. It is invisible to the client and appears in no scope document as a line item. Should it? Draft the scope language, then argue against including it.

D.4. Transfer. Compare event insurance practice with a field that has mature risk-transfer conventions — construction, film production, or commercial aviation. What does the mature field do that events does not? Which of those would actually work at a $42,000 wedding, and which are only viable at scale?

D.5. The advisory line. §9.9 says never to advise on coverage. Write three sentences a planner may say about insurance and three they must not. Then handle the hard case: a client asks directly whether they should buy event cancellation insurance. What do you say?

Part M: Mixed Practice (Interleaved) ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

M.1. (Ch.8 + Ch.9) A vendor's contract has no insurance provision and they cannot produce a certificate. Chapter 8 called this the one engagement-stopping signal. Write what you say to the client, and what you say to the vendor.

M.2. (Ch.5) Occupancy for the seated-dinner configuration turns out to be 150, and your client has 172 confirmed. What are the options, and which is cheapest?

M.3. (Ch.7) Permits and insurance are $2,100 and were never budgeted. Write the change order, including the source-of-funds line.

M.4. (Looks like one thing, is another) A client says "we got the wedding insurance." What do you ask, and why is the obvious follow-up not the useful one?

M.5. (Ch.1 + Ch.6 + Ch.9) A couple compares a $12,000 all-inclusive hotel with a $4,800 barn. Add the permit and insurance differential to Chapter 1's all-in comparison. How much does it move the answer?

Part E: Research and Extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐

E.1. Investigate whether your state has dram shop liability, social host liability, both, or neither, and what the elements are. Find the statute or the leading case. Write 700 words with sources and an explicit statement of what you could not determine. Have it reviewed.

E.2. Compare event cancellation insurance products from three providers. Build a table of named perils and exclusions. Which perils appear in all three? Which appear in only one? What would you tell a client to look for?

E.3. Research a real, publicly documented incident at a large event where liability was contested — a structural failure, a crowd incident, an alcohol-related claim. Trace who was named, what coverage responded, and how it resolved. Write 800 words. Use only publicly reported facts, and cite them.

Solutions

Selected solutions: appendices/answers-to-selected.md. Rubrics for open-ended items: instructor-guide/additional-assessments/all-assessments.md.