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and injuring three workers. The charges, laid by the Ontario Ministry of Labour, name Live Nation Canada Inc., Live Nation Ontario Concerts GP Inc., Optex Staging and Services Inc., as well as an engineer. "Good companies and promoters are paying more attention to risk management and risk control," says Hollingsworth. He expects there will be more focus on making sure third parties brought into the mix are adequately insured, as well as whoever is bringing them in is adequately insured. But for artists who already have a public drug abuse issue, getting coverage is already fairly difficult. It's not like insurance companies have never thought of this, says Tarantino. "If any of those things are being reported about in the media, you'll have to take a full physical and maybe a psychological exam," says Oballa. There will most likely be exclusions for any pre-existing conditions. Joanne Stewart Bryan Smith Insurance companies, however, offer tailored products that will cover almost any set of circumstances, but they price them accordingly. "You can always get insurance for pretty much anything — it's what price you're going to have to pay for it," says Tarantino. The insurance will also depend on the parameters of the undertaking — whether it's a one-off concert or a 57-city tour going all over the world. Some insurers restrict the reach of the policy to Canada, which becomes an issue if the performer goes to the U.S., says Hollingsworth. Some acts tour across Canada, with the exception of a few border towns, such as Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, or Seattle. It's up to the broker as to whether the territorial scope of the coverage extends into the U.S. Some policies include coverage in both Canada and the U.S. But for travel to other parts of the world, acts will need to ensure coverage extends to those regions. The insurer would likely make an Lindsey Love-Forester Sarah Conlin assessment as to whether there are particular risks in a particular country, said Tarantino. And that would affect coverage and premiums — if, say, the band is traveling to Turkey and the Syrian war is going on next door, or the band is scheduled to play in a city that just experienced an earthquake and the infrastructure has been degraded in some way. "Insurance policies are always fun to read," says Tarantino. "Their incentive is to exclude as much as possible." Those exclusions include everything from civil insurrection to acts of God, leaving insurance policies, to some degree, open to interpretation. Everybody who stands to make money from an event should have insurance, says Oballa. But it's not enough just to buy insurance — and that's where both in-house and external counsel come into the picture, to help tailor insurance to the specific needs of the artist, promoter, venue, or other third party involved in a specific event. IH Upasana Sharma Growing. Family. Jennifer Howard Lerners specializes in thorny cases. Cases that come to us because they demand serious strategy. Now we've acquired five new faces who specialize in thorny cases, too. Joining Jennifer Howard, this new team supercharges our family practice. We love a challenge lerners.ca Lerners_IH_Dec_13.indd 1 www.ca na dia nl awy e r m a g . c o m / i n h o u s E 13-11-27 december 2013/january 2014 39 9:30 AM •

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