Glossary

Informed consent is a duty owed by a medical professional to obtain a patient's consent before performing a procedure or rendering treatment. After fully explaining the treatment, the physician should obtain the patient's consent to allow treatment. There is a presumption of negligence if injury results and the physician did not obtain such consent.

Inherent defects insurance is a first-party property insurance sold mostly in Europe that covers physical damage or imminent collapse of newly constructed property caused by faulty design, engineering, workmanship, or materials in load-bearing elements such as foundations, columns, walls, floors, beams, roofs, and land improvements. Unlike standard property policies, which only cover damage from inherent defects if damage is caused by a covered peril, inherent defects insurance is triggered by the mere existence of a defect. Inherent defects insurance provides a mechanism for reducing or avoiding construction defects litigation. In most cases, the policy is issued for a 10-year noncancellable term.

Inherent vice is an exclusion found in most property insurance policies eliminating coverage for loss caused by a quality in property that causes it to damage or destroy itself.

Initial premium concerns the amount paid at the inception of an insurance contract.

An initial public offering is the process of selling stock in a corporation for the first time to the general public. IPOs are handled by investment banking firms, which study the corporation's financial situation and then decide how many shares of stock should be sold and at what price. Individual investors are sometimes shut out of IPOs because investment bankers typically dole out IPO shares to institutional customers, such as mutual funds, pension funds, banks, and insurance companies. Accordingly, IPOs have received particular attention in recent years because class action lawsuits against corporate directors and officers have arisen in conjunction with the way in which the IPOs were allocated among various parties. Such claims are known as IPO laddering claims.

Initial public offering laddering claims are claims against corporate directors and officers associated with the manner in which the shares of an initial public offering (IPO) of the corporation's stock were allocated to various parties. Such claims allege two types of wrongdoing: (1) receipt of undisclosed commissions, whereby the IPO securities underwriters received greater compensation from investors than was disclosed in the IPO prospectus, rendering the prospectus false and misleading, and (2) illegal tie-in agreements, alleging that underwriters required investors in IPOs to agree, in return for receiving a favorable allocation of shares in the IPO, that the investors would purchase additional shares immediately following the IPO. This would increase demand for the stock and cause a rise in the market price of the stock immediately following the IPO.

Injunctive relief is a legal alternative to monetary damages in a civil suit. It involves a court ordering a party to take an affirmative action or restraining a party from taking a particular action. For example, assume an individual owns a home surrounded by 100-year-old trees and his neighbor intends to cut down the trees, alleging that they are on her property. While this dispute is pending, a court may issue an injunction prohibiting the neighbor from cutting down the trees until the matter is heard and resolved. Injunctions have also been sought to protect trade secrets and to safeguard a person's reputation. This measure is the appropriate remedy in any situation in which, if the defendant is not ordered to cease performing an action, the plaintiff will be unable to be properly compensated. Liability insurance policies typically provide coverage only for "damages," not for injunctive relief.

Inland marine coverage is property insurance for property in transit over land, certain types of movable property that may not remain at a fixed location, instrumentalities of transportation (such as bridges, roads, and piers), instrumentalities of communication (such as television and radio towers), and legal liability exposures of bailees. Many inland marine coverage forms provide coverage without regard to the location of the covered property; these are sometimes called "floater" policies. As a group, inland marine coverage forms are generally broader than property coverage forms.

Innkeepers legal liability is the legal liability of hotel and motel operators as bailees for the safekeeping of guest's property. An innkeepers legal liability policy insures against this liability, as imposed by statute in each state, usually with a limit of $1,000 per guest and an appropriate aggregate limit. This coverage is available by endorsement to a standard commercial crime insurance policy.

Insider trading is the trading of a corporation's stock (or other securities, such as bonds) by corporate insiders. Corporate insiders include officers, directors, or persons holding substantial (e.g., more than 5 percent) blocks of the firm's stock. Insider trading is legal, provided the person making the trade did not do so on the basis of private information to which the public was not privy and reported the trade to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Conversely, trades by insiders are illegal when they are made with nonpublic knowledge. Directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance policies specifically exclude coverage for claims involving damages produced by illegal insider trading. However, the policies do cover the cost of defending against allegations of illegal insider trading.