[Community_garden] Liability Insurance

[Jack Hale]

 My pleasure.
It doesn't really matter whether the property owner is a municipality or
a business or an individual, although a case can be made that a
municipality should waive any insurance requirement because community
gardens perform an important public service.  On the other hand, it is a
good idea to have a lease or licensing agreement or at least a memo of
understanding so that everybody knows who is responsible for what.  Part
of that agreement can refer to indemnification and insurance.
Municipalities usually have lots of lawyers and risk managers working
for them, so they tend to include that kind of language.  Other folks
may be more relaxed about it.  Your first strategy is to try to get the
landowner to drop that requirement.  If that doesn't work, you can ask
that the garden pay only the insurance cost to the property owner of
adding the garden use to the property.  The next option is to get
another nonprofit to sponsor the garden and extend its own insurance
coverage over it.  This seems to be the arrangement you have with your
Chamber of Commerce.  Good luck.  I hope that does the trick.
One of our correspondents mentioned that there have been examples of
lawsuits filed against gardens.  Although that may be technically true,
I haven't heard of more than a couple in the almost 30 years I have been
involved in community gardens.  Unless you see yourself in a
particularly vulnerable situation, it may not be worth it to go through
the hassle of obtaining insurance unless somebody requires it.  This
would be especially true if your garden is a free standing organization
with no assets.  It would be more important for individual gardeners who
do have assets to protect themselves with umbrella coverage
JH


Jack N. Hale
Executive Director
Knox Parks Foundation
75 Laurel Street
Hartford, CT 06106
860/951-7694

-----Original Message-----
From: community_garden-bounces at list.communitygarden.org
[mailto:community_garden-bounces at list.communitygarden.org] On Behalf Of
Rebekah.L.Filipello at wellsfargo.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 12:59 PM
To: community_garden at list.communitygarden.org
Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Liability Insurance

Jack, I very much appreciate your list: there is good information there
which is not on the ACGA website. Our Chamber of Commerce may extend
their 'umbrella' over the future Community Garden, as an extension of
the Grower's Market, a Chamber member. Our difference is that the
garden-to-be is on private, not city, property, so there needs to be a
lease drafted that is conditional on securing the insurance as a
requirement of securing the insurance, etc.... 

(
Man, all I want to do is dig...)  

Beki Filipello





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