REGARDLESS of whether a company is publicly owned, privately held or nonprofit, the employment practices liability exposure seems to be its greatest concern among the various management liability risks it faces. Certainly, awareness of the issue is high, given the attention that the media have given to some of the more spectacular cases.

At last fall's annual conference of the Professional Liability Underwriting Society, a panel of speakers surveyed today's legal landscape as it pertains to employment practices and offered some suggestions for preventing claims. Jack McCalmon, Esq., a partner in the law firm Titus, Hillis, Reynolds, Love, Dickman & McCalmon, was the moderator. Panelists included Lucy Ann Galioto, vice president, National Union Fire Insurance Co., part of American International Group; David Keenan, vice president and EPL claim manager for Chubb Group of Insurance Cos.; and Philip R. Voluck, Esq., a partner with the law firm Kaufman, Schneider & Bianco. Following are edited excerpts from the discussion.

Lucy Ann Galioto: I'm going to go over some statistics with you. In 2004, there were 79,000 charges filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That was a decrease over the past two years. However, the decrease doesn't mean that there are fewer people filing charges. It means more people are filing with state administrative agencies and in state courts. Why? Because employees are smart. They understand there are no caps on punitive damages in the state courts. Also, while the number of EEOC charges was down, the recovery was up. The EEOC was able to recover $419 million in compensatory damages for the employees who filed.