Need HOA insurance for HOA website?

Started by JackieB • 5 replies • 1551 views

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JackieB (California)
Posts: 198

Posted:

I am curious as to what other HOA's have done about insuring their website against a lawsuit from any/all homeowner.???
We have had our website 5 years, more than 50% of membership is logged on. We have never had an incident or even a pending
problem........but the question came up about a potential lawsuit. We have a section where each registered homeowner can start a
conversation about any issue or concern. They can even ask the name of a good plumber, etc. Our only rules are "remain polite, and
play fair." This is an uncensored section and no problems have raised their ugly heads........However are we being naive? Does anyone
cover their website with a special insurance rider???
Jackie
California

JenniferM10 (Illinois)
Posts: 97

Posted:

I can't imagine having an insurance policy or rider that would specifically cover your website, and I've been building them for 10 years for businesses of all sizes.

What you need is to post a Terms of Use agreement and a Privacy Policy.

Here are some examples I found:

http://okgo.forumsunlimited.com/index.php?act=boardrules
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/terms.html
http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=user_agreement&trk=hb_ft_userag <-sections 10 and 11 would be the most applicable for your purposes.

The big things are to give users the ability to report someone who's being abusive and to have someone on or appointed by the board periodically checking in to verify what kind of messages are being posted.

JackieB (California)
Posts: 198

Posted:

Thanks for the suggestions. Makes sense to me. Let's see what other HOA's are doing?
Jackie

MelissaP1 (Alabama)
Posts: 13,836

Posted:

Why the fear of lawsuits? IF it's interaction between other members then why would the HOA be sued? It's just communication and NOT money exchanging hands. You can be sued for anything and everything, you just have to be prepared when you do. I don't think posting or even having a website is grounds for a lawsuit except for cases of liable. Which can be controlled by simply having a webmaster to stop bad posts like the other poster suggested.

Former HOA President

TimB4 (Tennessee)
Posts: 21,059

Posted:

We don't have insurance on the web site. Since the site is authorized by the BOD, I suspect that existing insurance would cover any unforeseen issues. Note: we do have the disclaimers in our forum section.

Tim

SteveM9 (Massachusetts)
Posts: 3,699

Posted:

HOA site is basically publishing what the members post, good or bad. Similar to a newspaper.

You shouldn't let members post anything on the HOA web site. You should have a link to a forum, on another web site, not hosted or maintained by the HOA and make that statement clear to the members. Setup an anonymous free forum somewhere like www.freeforums.org or similar. Totally avoid litigation by killing the paper trail.

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