Learn About the Dangers of Broad Indemnification/Duty to Defend
ACEC WI's top legislative priority this year is to address indemnification and duty to defend clauses in public contracts. This is a fundamental fairness issue for design professionals and it is one we hope to address through legislative change.
Indemnification and Duty to Defend can be complicated contractual legal terms or they can be as simple as understanding that a government contract shouldn’t require an engineer to pay the legal expenses for the government when the engineer didn’t so anything wrong. That is Duty to Defend.
It can be as simple as understanding that there is reasonable and unreasonable indemnification. Reasonable would be compensating the government for a loss due to an engineer's negligence. Unreasonable would be compensating the government when the engineer did nothing wrong or even for someone else’s negligence.
Reasonable indemnification is reasonable, which is why it should stay in contracts. Unreasonable indemnification is unreasonable, which is why it should not be allowed. ACEC WI is only pursuing a law change for public contracts and not contracts between a private professional and a private client.
Please watch the videos to learn more and look for more information from ACEC WI in the future about how you can make a difference on these issues.