The costs of defending even one suit can be significant. These costs are not covered anywhere else in your insurance portfolio. If you were to lose a suit, you could be responsible to pay damages or fines. A lawsuit filed against your consulting business will usually name both your business entity and you as defendants. Protection under the corporation umbrella is not always available.
Clients often require that the consultants they hire furnish proof of professional liability.
As the consulting profession grows, clients are insisting with increasing frequency that their consultants have the proper insurance in force. Although neither lawsuit involved a chemical engineer being sued for professional liability, the trend is clearly toward adding these professionals as defendants. In these cases, and numerous other lawsuits involving consumer products, chemists appear as experts for the litigants. However, given the wide range of activities directly affected by chemists, it is only a matter of time before the liability explosion affects the chemical consulting profession. Thirty years ago, lawsuits against design professionals were rare.