Abbitt Photography wrote:
This is an interesting question. When it comes to MM booked shoots, it's more often the model who is providing a business service and the photographer who is the customer, not the reverse.

Or is the photographer the "employer" paying the model to do a job?

Related to another post, while a model may claim she accept self responsibility, that may not be the case if something goes wrong.  Even people who sign waivers accepting personal responsibility often sue when tragedy strikes, even though they said in writing that they understood and accepted the risks.

Liability waivers offer limited protection, and even the best-intentioned people may sue after suffering a serious injury resulting in major medical expenses and being unable to work for a significant time.

The location matters too. Do you have the necessary permits (which typically require proof of insurance)?

Edu's article mentioned that photographer's who are offering a for fee service should be able to offer proof of insurance.  One could certainly ague the same should apply to a model who is offering a fee for service.

In researching the article we were unable to find insurance policies specific to models but freelancer liability insurance does exist, and some companies can provide facial disfigurement insurance and other coverage tailored to models.

Abbitt Photography wrote:
This is an interesting question. When it comes to MM booked shoots, it's more often the model who is providing a business service and the photographer who is the customer, not the reverse.

Model Mayhem Edu wrote:
Or is the photographer the "employer" paying the model to do a job?

While some companies do employ models, I'm talking about the common practice here of non-profesional photographers hiring the services of a paid model as an independent contractor.

Just as someone might want to know if a wedding photographer they are hiring is insured, it makes sense for someone who is hiring a model to want to know if that contractor is insured.  To the best of my knowledge models are not magically exempt from the safety obligations and liability standards that apply to other contractors.

Camerosity wrote:
Most full-time professional photographers I know carry some type of business-related liability insurance (although many are under insured). Most others don’t.

Just because the photographer has insurance, that doesn’t mean that the model is covered. Liability insurance only covers damages for which the photographer is liable.

Let me give you an example of a liability case from another type of business. For 11 years, I worked for a company that during that time hovered somewhere around No. 16 on the Fortune 500.

That company had a huge complex of plants in Pasadena, TX. I don’t recall the exact number of plants, but the plant that blew up (where about one-third of the world’s high-density polyethylene was made) was Plant 38.

The main part of the plant was a loop reactor that looked like a nine-story paperclip. Several feet from the reactor was the control room.

The control room had a bank of computers that managed the plant’s functionality. Schematics of various sections of the plant were displayed on various monitors. If you wanted to open or close a valve, increase or decrease the pressure, etc., that was done by touching that component on the monitor, then touching another point to give the instruction.

Federal regulations and common sense required that the reactor be cleaned out periodically. There are engineering companies that specialize in this, and one of them was called in for the cleanout.

As was the practice, the plant owner’s employees were told to leave the building during the cleanout, and only the engineering contractor’s employees were inside the control room.

Someone inside the control room touched a valve (which happened to be the main natural gas valve) on a monitor and seconds later, 23 people were dead or fatally injured, and 314 others were injured.

Several other plants and the administrative building for the complex were damaged.

An area comparable to four city blocks became a pile or rubble about two stories high. Electricity and phones were out for about a 4-square mile area, where hundreds of windows were broken, and the mayor of Houston said she felt the blast in her office at city hall in Houston.

You might think that the company that owned the plant was liable for the deaths of the contractor’s employees, but that’s not the case. Because only a contractor’s employee could have caused the explosion by touching the valve on a monitor, the contractor was liable.

matt-h2 wrote:
Your point is well taken, but apparently OSHA, at least, disagreed about responsibility in the case you cited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_disaster_of_1989

Thank you for bringing up the Wikipedia article (which was based on the OSHA report and includes no coverage of the subsequent lawsuits and trials). I didn’t include them because I didn’t find them relevant to the topic under discussion.

OSHA conducted an investigation, wrote a report and assessed fines. That’s what they do. But OSHA is a regulatory agency, not a court. OSHA does not determine which parties are liable for what damages.

OSHA does not employ judges, bailiffs court clerks or court reporters, try cases or own or operate a single court house or courtroom. That’s not their job. That happens in the courts.

Let’s say a dump truck rear-ends a Volkswagen and demolishes it. Then the police check the amount of tread on the tires of the VW and find that the tread does not meet the state’s safety requirements and issue a citation to the driver of the VW. Does this mean that the driver of the VW caused the accident – or that it would not have happened if he had replaced his tires?

OSHA never disputed that the proximate cause of the explosion was the opening of the main natural gas valve, causing a large volume of natural gas to reach a flame, which ignited the natural gas and caused the explosion. That would have been ludicrous.

OSHA didn’t inspect the plant afterward and find violations there. By the time OSHA arrived, the plant was twisted steel and rubble covering a four-block area.

However, there is one thing OSHA can do and did do. There’s an OSHA regulation requires that the owners of regulated industrial facilities (and many other facilities) protect employees from injury or death.

Was someone injured or killed? Yes. Did the employer protect them from injury or death? Obviously not. Standard procedure. Open and shut case, under the regulation. No investigation or finding of liability required.

So OSHA totals the number of injuries and deaths, multiples that number by a fixed amount and fines the company for 337 instances of failure to protect employees from injury or death. That was the bulk of the fines.

There were also additional fines for violations found during previous inspections that had already been corrected – not just at the HDPE plant, but in the entire complex.

Have you ever heard of OSHA inspecting dozens of plants (or even a single plant) with hundreds or thousands of employees and not issuing a single citation? I haven’t.

However, I’ve never heard of a wastebasket being left where an employee might trip over it causing an explosion that killed or injured hundreds of people.

OSHA never assigned liability for the explosion or suggested that the fact that a natural gas valve was opened during the cleanout was not the cause of the explosion.

Juries did not agree with OSHA’s finding that a faulty connection involving the natural gas line “might have” contributed to the explosion. That was shown in court to have been corrected days before the explosion occurred.

OSHA also found that its own regulations were insufficient to prevent the disaster, i.e., that OSHA was partly at fault. (However, OSHA did not fine OSHA.)

So OSHA added a number of new regulations. For example, they required that there be two natural gas valves, both of which must be open in order for natural gas to flow, in certain types and sizes of plants.

Model Mayhem Edu wrote:
Or is the photographer the "employer" paying the model to do a job?

That’s a very good question, pertinent to this discussion, and I don’t know the answer. The answer may not be the same in every state – or in every case in the same state.

However, when the question is whether someone is an employee, a freelancer or an independent contractor (for the purpose of determining whether payroll taxes must be withheld), the main determining factors include whether the person is paid a regular salary at a fixed rate, whether there is an employment contract (which is not the same as a contract to perform one task or assignment that takes two hours or one day), whether the payment is reported by a W-2 or Form 1099A, and whether the person receives employee benefits.

I don’t have any citations, but I’ve heard of those same factors (including whether payroll taxes are withheld) being used in copyright cases to determine whether images are considered work for hire or not, i.e., whether a photographer is an employee or an independent contractor.

Presumably some of those same factors might be considered in determining whether a model is a freelancer or independent contractor or an employee as well.

BobBarford Photo wrote:
I wanted to ask specifically models a question relating to insurance during either private shoots or group events. Do you expect the sponsor (or photographer) to carry insurance in the event that you would get accidentally get hurt?  For example, you happen to be in a particular pose and you hurt your knee or ankle? Do you take this as an assumed risk of your profession or do you seek compensation?  What is a light stand fell on you because it did not have sandbags?

I would assume that most models have a reasonable idea of their abilities and they would not undertake something so risky that they know that they may be hurt.

What if the sandbag fell on the models head when they were on stage like those old murder mysteries from the 80's?. I once had a model jump off a table in high heels, it seemed dangerous...