Glossary

Protection classes are the 10 categories used by the Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO), to rank the fire protection in cities and towns according to these four factors. Fire department quality. This includes its equipment, staffing (i.e., paid or volunteer), training, and geographic distribution of firefighting companies. This factor accounts for 50 percent of the total classification. Water supply system. This includes the condition, distribution, inspection, and maintenance of fire hydrants and a comparison of the available water to the amount needed to extinguish a fire. This accounts for 40 percent of the total classification. Fire alarm and communications systems. These include telephone systems, telephone lines, staffing of these systems, and the quality of the dispatching system. This factor accounts for 10 percent of the total classification. Community risk reduction. This involves a community's efforts in fire risk reduction, such as fire prevention code adoption and enforcement, public fire safety education, and fire investigation The ISO public protection classification (PPC) program is a rating system that measures the quality of public fire protection in fire districts across the country, ranging from 1 (best) to 10 (worst). While nearly all US insurers use ISO's PPC system in calculating insurance rates for homes, many insurers deviate from the rules of the PPC program through the use of independently filed rules.

Protective liability insurance is a general term describing a type of liability insurance that is purchased by an indemnitor, such as a contractor, for its indemnitee, such as the project owner, to protect the indemnitee against liability for bodily injury (BI) or property damage (PD) arising out of the indemnitor's operations.

A protective order is any order or decree of a court whose purpose is to protect a party from harassment or further discovery.

Protective professional indemnity insurance is first-party insurance that provides supplemental coverage for professional errors and omissions (E&O) claims against the insured's design professionals.

A protective safeguards endorsement to property insurance makes it a condition of coverage that the protective safeguards cited in the endorsement (such as an automatic sprinkler system or night watch guard) be in operation at all times except when the insurer has been notified of the impairment in protection.

A provider is a healthcare professional or other entity that provides healthcare services, such as a physician, hospital, skilled nursing facility, or intensive care facility.

Provisional notice of cancellation (PNOC) is given to allow the option of withdrawing from the reinsurance treaty if renewal terms are unacceptable.

Proximate cause is the cause having the most significant impact in bringing about the loss under a first-party property insurance policy, when two or more independent perils operate at the same time (i.e., concurrently) to produce a loss. Courts employ a set of proximate cause rules to resolve causation disputes when a property policy states that it covers or excludes losses "caused by" a peril and there is more than one peril at work in a fact pattern. Under common law, whether the policy provides coverage depends on which peril is chosen as the proximate cause. If the peril selected as the proximate cause is covered, courts consider the loss to have been caused by the covered peril and will hold that the loss is covered. If the peril selected as the proximate cause is uncovered or excluded, courts consider the loss to have been caused by the uncovered or excluded peril and will hold that the loss is not covered. As a principle of tort law, proximate cause refers to a doctrine by which a plaintiff must prove that the defendant's actions set in motion a relatively short chain of events that could have reasonably been anticipated to lead to the plaintiff's damages. If the defendant's actions were "proximate" or close enough in the chain of causation to have foreseeably led to the plaintiff's damages, courts will impose liability. Otherwise, if the defendant's actions set in motion a long, bizarre chain of events that could not have reasonably been foreseen to lead to the plaintiff's damages, courts will not impose liability. In tort law, multiple actions by one or more defendants that are a substantial factor in producing the loss can qualify as proximate causes.

Pro forma financial statements are a set of financial statements (usually an income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flow) designed to exhibit future financial results.

Pro hac vice is a Latin term that means "for this time only." For example, a lawyer from New York who is not licensed to practice in Texas may, for a Texas trial, be admitted pro hoc vice to work on the particular case.