Counsel's Corners

  Surety Bonds for Contractors: The Complete 2026 Guide In the construction industry, trust is currency — and surety bonds are how that trust is formally guaranteed. When a property owner hires a general contractor to build a $5,000,000 commercial facility, or when a municipality awards a $15,000,000 road contract to a civil contractor, the owner needs more than a contractor's word that the project will be completed on time, on budget, and free of unpaid subcontractor claims. Surety bonds provide that guarantee — backed by the financial strength of a licensed surety company and the contractual obligation of the contractor. In 2026, surety bonds are a legal requirement for virtually every public construction contract in the United States under the Miller Act and its state-law equivalents, and are increasingly required for private commercial construction projects as well. Understanding how surety bonds work, what each type covers, how bond limits are established, and how to build ...

  Cargo Insurance 2026: Protecting Shipments Against Geopolitical Risks On March 1, 2026, marine insurance companies including Gard, Skuld, NorthStandard, the London P&I Club, and the American Club issued cancellation notices for war risk cover in the Gulf. War risk premiums — which had been running at 0.2% to 0.25% of ship value — spiked to 1% within 48 hours, representing a 300% increase. Insurers were not just raising rates. Some were declining to offer terms at all for vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz . Global head of marine at Marsh told The Guardian that insurance rates could rise by 50 to 100 percent, or even more, for ships in the region. This is the 2026 marine cargo insurance reality: geopolitical shocks that arrive without warning, insurance markets that respond in hours, and businesses that had not updated their coverage discovering the hard way what their policies don't cover. Marine cargo insurance has shifted from routine compliance to active ri...

  Commercial Drone Insurance: Regulations for Fleet Operators in 2026 A company invested $50,000 in a commercial drone fleet. They hired pilots. They scheduled their first major infrastructure inspection contract. Their broker confirmed they were covered. Then a drone clipped a utility line during a routine flight. The resulting power outage cost $180,000 in business interruption claims. Equipment damage added another $40,000. The general liability policy explicitly excluded aviation operations — including drones. This scenario plays out more often than corporate risk managers realise. The gap between what companies think they're insured for and what policies actually cover has become one of the costliest oversights in commercial drone programmes. The global drone insurance market is growing rapidly — from $1.5 billion in 2023 and expected to climb to $3.5 billion by 2033, with the UAV insurance market projected to reach $2.6 billion by 2026. As commercial drone operations expan...

ESG & Pollution Liability: Greenwashing litigation has expanded aggressively. Watchdogs tracked well over 150 US greenwashing class actions through early 2025, with California and New York as the most active venues. The EU Green Claims Directive is regulating environmental marketing claims across Europe. The UK is implementing the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards from 2026. And a Washington county court accepted what may be the first-ever climate change wrongful death lawsuit in 2025, alleging that a plaintiff's mother died in an extreme heat event due to companies' deceptive conduct in delaying climate mitigation. The intersection of ESG regulations, pollution liability, and environmental litigation is creating a new category of business exposure that standard liability insurance was not designed to address. For companies in any sector with environmental footprints, supply chain dependencies, or public ESG commitments, the question in 2026 is not whether to obtai...

  Avoiding 7-Figure Errors A real estate investor closes on a $4.2 million industrial warehouse. Two years later, a contractor who worked on the property a decade prior files a lien for unpaid work that was missed in the title search. The investor's lender is protected — their loan policy covers the lender's interest. The investor has no owner's policy . The lawsuit, the legal fees, and the lien resolution cost $340,000 out of pocket. This scenario repeats itself constantly in commercial real estate because a persistent myth pervades the market: that the lender's title insurance policy protects the buyer. It does not. The lender's policy protects only the lender's loan balance. The buyer's equity — often millions of dollars — is completely unprotected without a separate owner's title insurance policy. In 2026, commercial real estate transactions are expected to exceed $100 billion this quarter alone, marking three consecutive quarters of CRE marke...