Legal Question in Personal Injury in North Carolina

Re: Limiting Liabilty on a contractor

That's a good question. There are different concerns on your part, and different types of liability to consider. First would be damage to third parties. E.g., the contractor severs a power line, and it causes a surge next door; or he causes a tree to fall on a neighbor. The second would be damage to you; e.g. he wires the job improperly, which starts a fire and burns down the house. Third would be injury to him; e.g. he falls on your property. These each raise different considerations, and different types of insurance coverage would be at issue. I believe your homeowner's (HO) policy would cover your potential liability to third persons, and to the contractor himself, but there are a lot of exclusions, so it's difficult to say with certainty. As for damage to your property, a lot of that should be covered to some extent by your HO policy also. As a practical matter, the best and most you could probably do would be to have a provision in the contract requiring him to indemnify you and hold you harmless from all claims. You can probably find some acceptable language on the internet somewhere. These provisions, however, are sometimes unenforceable.