Contract Law

Indemnification Clauses: Insights for Indiana Business Owners

April 19, 2025 | Michael R. Smith

Business People, and Man and a Woman, Shaking Hands over Contract Indemnification clauses are essential elements of business contracts that allow the parties to allocate responsibility for specific losses or claims. For Indiana businesses, understanding how indemnity works under Indiana law is vital for managing risks and reducing liability exposure.

This article explores key indemnification terms and practical tips for analyzing clauses. By understanding these provisions, business owners can understand their rights, duties, and risks.

Let’s start with some definitions and then examine how the defined terms fit into an example clause.

Advanced Risk Allocation in Contracts: Tailoring Clauses for Greater Protection

April 11, 2025 | Michael R. Smith

In our last article, we explored key risk allocation clauses business attorneys use in contracts, including indemnification, liability caps, waiver of consequential damages, and termination provisions. These foundational concepts highlight the importance of clear drafting and strategic negotiation in managing contractual liabilities. This article delves deeper into advanced considerations, offering practical guidance for tailoring clauses to industry-specific needs, coordinating provisions with insurance coverage, and understanding the interplay between liability caps and indemnification. As in the previous article, we focus on Indiana law. Although the details mary vary from state to state, the same concepts apply to most U.S. jurisdictions.

Tailoring Clauses for Industry-Specific Needs

Risk allocation requirements vary significantly across industries, necessitating tailored approaches to contractual provisions. For example:

Understanding and Negotiating Risk Allocation in Contracts

April 11, 2025 | Michael R. Smith

Effective risk allocation is essential in contract law, allowing parties to address potential liabilities and manage their exposure predictably. Business lawyers must draft risk allocation clauses carefully to ensure clarity, foster collaboration, and protect financial interests. This article explores the key types of risk allocation clauses found in business agreements and offers insights into how to negotiate them to achieve fair outcomes. As usual, our analysis assumes that Indiana law applies to the contract, but the same types of clauses are used in every jurisdiction in the United States.

Parties to contracts sometimes leave the negotiation of risk allocation to the last minute, when it can no longer be avoided. After all, few people entering into a business deal expect it to go wrong, and it can be uncomfortable to discuss who will suffer the consequences if it does. Even worse, some business owners never seriously consider risk allocation at all, expecting their lawyers to draft the language by themselves, under the misconception that indemnification clauses and waivers of consequential damages are just boilerplate that can be copied from one contract and pasted into another. Careful business owners do neither of those things, and their attorneys should try not to let them. Business owners and their lawyers alike should consider and tailor risk allocation languages to the particular situation.

Key Types of Risk Allocation Clauses

NIL Rights in Indiana

March 21, 2025 | Morgan B. Brading

AdobeStock_545862793-300x200 The concept of the right of publicity, sometimes referred to as “name, image, and likeness” (NIL) rights, particularly as they apply to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) student-athletes, has gained significant attention in recent years, especially with the rise of social media and the increasing commercialization of personal brands. Indiana’s right of publicity, codified at Indiana Code 32-36, provides a robust framework for protecting these rights. This article delves into the specifics of Indiana’s rights of publicity, what those rights entail, who is entitled to them, how to prevent misappropriation, and ways to monetize these rights.

What is the Right of Publicity?

The right of publicity is a legal principle that allows individuals to control the commercial use of their personal identity. This includes their name, image, likeness, voice, signature, and other distinctive characteristics. Essentially, it allows individuals to prevent others from exploiting their persona for commercial gain without permission.

HB 1625: Proposed Prohibition on Noncompete Agreements

March 10, 2025 | Michael R. Smith

Non-Compete-Agreement-529963913_724x487-1-300x202

Update on Bill Actions:

This bill was introduced on January 21 and on first reading was assigned to the Committee on Employment, Labor, and Pensions. The deadline for the House to pass the bill and send it to the Senate passed with no further action. Therefore, this bill will not become law this Session.

Noncompete Agreements

More about Physician Noncompete Agreements

September 4, 2023 | Michael R. Smith

We recently posted an article discussing Senate Bill 417, which revised Indiana’s statute on noncompete agreements between physicians and their employers, Indiana Code 25-22.5-5.5. A physician in northern Indiana may be the first to attempt to use the statute. The case is Lankford v. Lutheran Medical Group, filed in Allen County Commercial Court.

Dr. David Lankford was employed by Lutheran Medical Group, LLC to work at Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne as a pediatric intensivist treating patients in its pediatric intensive care unit. In addition to pediatric intensivists, Lutheran employed neonatologists to treat patients in the neonatal intensive care unit and pediatric hospitalists to treat patients elsewhere in the hospital.

According to Dr. Lankford’s complaint, in October 2022, Lutheran eliminated the jobs of the hospitalists and required the intensivists to assume their responsibilities, in addition to their previous responsibilities in the pediatric intensive care unit. In December, Dr. Lankford notified Lutheran that he believed the increase in his responsibilities constituted a breach of his employment contract. He resigned in January 2023.

Physician Noncompete Agreements in Indiana

June 22, 2023 | Michael R. Smith

A few months ago, we wrote an article about a bill in the Indiana General Assembly, Senate Bill 7, that would essentially ban noncompete agreements[1] between medical doctors and their employers. The General Assembly enacted the bill and Governor Holcomb signed it, but only after considerable revision. The ban was narrowed, but remaining covenants not to compete will be enforceable less often.

Summary

After July 1, 2023:

Mandatory and Directory Statutes: What does “shall” really mean?

February 27, 2023 | Michael R. Smith

Lawyers and others often say that “may” is permissive and “shall” is mandatory. By that, they mean that when a statute says a person “may” do something, that person has the discretion to do it or not, but when a statute says a person “shall” do something, the person has no choice. Or, as the Drafting Manual for the Indiana General Assembly puts it:

To create a duty, say “shall.”

Noncompete Agreements, Physicians, and Indiana Senate Bill 7

January 12, 2023 | Michael R. Smith

Update: Senate Bill 7 dealing with physician noncompete agreements was signed into law by the governor but in a form that differs significantly from the originally introduced version described in this article. Click here for a discussion of the final version of Senate Bill 7 that goes into effect on July 1, 2023.

Covenants not to compete, or noncompete agreements, between employers and employees prohibit an employee from competing with the employer after the employment relationship ends. Noncompete agreements are common in some industries or professions, particularly those that rely heavily on proprietary information or ongoing relationships with clients or customers.

Noncompete agreements are are part of a larger category of contracts, those that restrain the freedom of trade in one way or another. For covenants not to compete, the restraint is the restriction of a person’s right to make a living. If the restrictions are too severe, they can run afoul of public policy or federal or state antitrust statutes, in which case they are unenforceable.

Buying and selling goods at auction: When does “sold” mean “sold”?

May 6, 2022 | Michael R. Smith

istockphoto-477779010-170x170-2-150x113 From a legal perspective, auctions are interesting transactions.

Offer and acceptance in most sales

Let’s start by discussing an ordinary contract for the sale of goods, one not created at auction. Law students learn in their first year that the formation of a contract requires, among other things, offer and acceptance. Generally speaking, an offer must include all the essential elements of a contract and may include other terms. An acceptance must be the “mirror image” of the offer. That means, to form a contract from the offer, the person to whom the offer is made must accept it exactly as presented, without changing any of the terms or introducing new ones. A purported acceptance that changes, removes, or adds terms is not an acceptance at all. It is a rejection of the offer and the extension of a counteroffer.