Wage and Hour Insurance Coverage: Mitigating Risk With EPL, D&O, and Specialty Wage and Hour Insurance Policies

This CLE course will provide employment counsel with a review of current developments in insurance coverage for increasingly costly wage and hour claims. The panel will provide a practical briefing on coverage under employment practices liability (EPL), directors and officers (D&O), and specialty wage and hour insurance policies. The panel will also address how policy wording, exclusions, hybrid employment claims, damages characterization, and claims-handling strategy can affect the availability and scope of coverage.

Wage and hour lawsuits remain one of the most significant workplace liability risks facing employers. Individual claims can become high-severity exposures when applied across a class or collective action, with liability potentially including unpaid wages, liquidated or multiple damages, statutory penalties, attorneys' fees, and substantial defense costs. 

As these exposures have increased, employers, brokers and counsel are paying greater attention to the adequacy of insurance protection for wage and hour claims. Traditional EPL policies often contain broad wage and hour exclusions, and D&O policies may contain similar limitations. At the same time, EPL policies may preserve coverage for retaliation, misrepresentation, wrongful termination, or other hybrid employment claims, while specialty wage and hour policies may provide broader protection for defense costs and certain categories of loss. 

Counsel must therefore understand how to analyze wage and hour claims by cause of action, remedy, policy provision, and applicable insurance doctrine. Coverage may turn on the scope of a wage and hour exclusion, the definition of Loss, the treatment of liquidated damages and attorneys' fees, related-claims provisions, prior knowledge, allocation, and whether supposedly wage-related claims actually constitute covered employment practices. 

Listen as our panel examines how EPL, D&O and specialty wage and hour insurance can respond to these claims. The panel will discuss key coverage decisions, hybrid employment claims, specialty policy features and exclusions, known-loss and fortuity issues, reasonable-expectations and estoppel arguments, and practical considerations when negotiating coverage, providing notice, and resolving mixed covered and uncovered claims.