Glossary

A public officials bond is a guarantee by the surety that the specified public official will faithfully perform his or her official duties, including accounting for all funds entrusted to his or her care.

Public officials liability insurance provides liability coverage for the errors and omissions of public officials. In effect, such policies serve the same function for elected/appointed officials of state and local government as directors and officers (D&O) insurance serves for the directors and officers of corporations. However, one major difference is that, under public officials liability forms, employees and the public entity itself are insureds, whereas this is not the case with D&O policies. Exclusions under this policy include losses due to fraud or dishonesty, bodily injury (BI) or property damage (PD), false arrest, assault and battery, defamation, and fiduciary liability.

Public or livery conveyance use involves the transporting of people and/or goods for hire, such as by a taxi service, motor carrier, or a delivery service. This coverage is excluded under the personal auto policy (PAP). Incidental use in an insured's sideline business can be an exception to this exclusion. A taxi service and a delivery service would need a business auto policy (BAP), and a motor carrier would need a motor carrier or truckers policy.

The public policy exception is a common law remedy to the employment-at-will doctrine that has been created by the judicial system. Courts in various jurisdictions have recognized that an employee should not be terminated for exercising rights under other laws that were enacted to protect the employee. An example of a wrongful termination suit that has been allowed involved the firing of an employee for missing a week of work to serve on jury duty.

The Public Risk Management Association (PRIMA) is an association of governmental risk managers that publishes a monthly magazine, sponsors seminars and an annual conference, and provides other services to its members.

Publishers liability refers to liability of a book, periodical, or other type of publisher arising from acts such as plagiarism, libel, or copyright infringement. Publishers of medical, engineering, and technical works may also face an errors and omissions (E&O) exposure from damage or injury arising from incorrect information that they provide. Coverage for these exposures is available in specialized policies, known as media liability insurance.

Punitive damages are damages in excess of those required to compensate the plaintiff for the wrong done, which are imposed to punish the defendant because of the particularly wanton or willful nature of their wrongdoing. They are also called "exemplary damages." Although the standard commercial general liability (CGL) policy and business auto policy (BAP) contain no punitive damage exclusion, many umbrella and excess liability policies contain such an exclusion.

A purchasing group, as authorized by the Liability Risk Retention Act of 1986, is a group formed to obtain liability coverage for its members, all of which must have similar or related exposures. The Act requires a purchasing group to be domiciled in a specific state. In contrast to risk retention groups (RRGs), purchasing groups are not risk-bearing entities.

A pure captive refers to a captive insurance company with one corporate owner, insuring only the risks of the parent organization or its subsidiaries. It is also called a single-parent captive.

A pure claims-made policy is a type of claims-made policy requiring that a claim be made against the insured during the policy period for coverage to apply. Unlike claims-made-and-reported forms, pure claims-made policies do not specify that the claim must also be reported to the insurer during the policy period. Instead, they indicate only that the claim must be reported to the insurer "immediately" or "as soon as practicable." For insureds, pure claims-made policies are preferable to claims-made-and-reported policies because it is sometimes difficult to report a claim to an insurer when it is made late in a policy period.