Protect Your Agency When Negotiating Special Event ContractsWarm weather signals the start of special event season for PDRMA members as towns and cities look to their local parks as staging areas for public events. It’s vital to begin the special-event process with PDRMA’s best practices in mind and have either PDRMA’s or your agency’s counsel review those contracts. A PDRMA member’s recent experience and foresight demonstrates why: A sudden, violent and unexpected thunderstorm swept through an event, upending a large, rented tent and causing significant personal injuries and loss of life.
When the park district’s executive director received a contract from the city to use his agency’s park as the site for the 2015 festival event, his first move was to send it to PDRMA for review. “I’ve been in an executive-level position for a PDRMA member agency for the past 22 years,” he explains. “I’m very familiar with the programs and services PDRMA offers and how hard it works to manage risk — a philosophy I share. I knew from experience that there are risks associated with festivals and wanted to protect our agency and its assets.”
 PDRMA’s in-house counsel worked with the park district to incorporate PDRMA’s risk management best practices into the draft contract. One crucial area was to identify specific areas of responsibility, and that the park district would provide only the location for the city’s event held on park district property and the city was responsible for the event itself including supervision of the festival. “PDRMA focused on legal and indemnification language along with insurance coverage,” the executive director explains, “to assure the city was compliant and had proper documentation.”
Assigning responsibility and indemnification was especially necessary in this case, because the city contracted directly with other vendors for all event services. “We had no role in selecting or managing any other parties who were hired or contracted for the festival nor any role in planning and/or executing the event.”
Ultimately, the executive director adds, “The most important contract change was the language to hold the park district harmless and indemnify us from all liability. Our role was merely one of support.”
“When your agency receives a contract to host an event for your town or city, it’s essential to add language that specifies and clarifies the respective responsibility of the parties involved and to incorporate best practices in risk transfer, such as requiring the town or city to add your park district as an additional insured on the liability policies of the town/city and other key third parties, such as vendors,” explains Steve Kleinman, PDRMA General Counsel. “For this event, the contract specified that the city — and not the park district — was solely responsible for supervision of and any emergency response at the event.”
Kleinman adds that the park district’s corporate counsel successfully negotiated the additional recommended language into the intergovernmental agreement (IGA), so the city and its vendors — rather than the park district — assumed legal responsibility for overseeing the event and providing liability insurance. The changes assured there was appropriate language the park district could use to defend itself in any subsequent tort lawsuit while accurately portraying the city to be responsible for supervision including crowd control, traffic control, police and/or security services as well as emergency planning and response.
“The key is to identify the logistics of the event proactively, making sure both parties are clear and in agreement as to their respective roles and responsibilities,” explains Kleinman. “Once you achieve that, the written agreement will naturally flow from proper planning — incorporating balanced and appropriate risk transfer such as indemnification and insurance obligations.”
With such an agreement in place, PDRMA successfully tendered the defense of the park district to the city’s general liability insurance carrier when the injured patrons filed lawsuits. Being able to do so benefitted both the park district and PDRMA by avoiding the costs of defending against the lawsuits and providing a significant amount of liability insurance coverage to the park district under the city’s general liability policy.
“Allow ample time to prepare and negotiate any IGA,” the executive director advises. “Treat the IGA with the same care you would in planning any large-scale event — start early, be deliberate and specific. And most importantly, use PDRMA and legal counsel to assist you.”
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