Directional Drilling Insurance in Michigan

Ask what Michigan’s anti-indemnity statute does to your contract and the honest answer is a question back: who owns the project? On a private build MCL 691.991 voids almost nothing — only indemnity for the promisee’s sole negligence. On a job for a public entity the same section forbids requiring you to defend or to assume liability beyond your own degree of fault. One statute, two regimes, and a fiber contractor moving between a private ISP build and a municipal one crosses between them without the paperwork changing shape.

The dig law pulls in a third direction, shielding a crew that located correctly even against a facility that was marked wrongly, while making concealment after a strike a criminal matter. §691.991 voids the clause; §460.729(2) sets the notice. The bore between them is covered on the Directional Drilling Insurance pillar and the pollution liability page.

One statute, two regimes, decided by the owner

MCL 691.991 opens by describing the work it governs, and the description is worth reading closely because it settles the scope question that troubles a boring subcontractor in several other states. The section applies to a contract for the design, construction, alteration, repair, or maintenance of a building, a structure, an appurtenance, an appliance, a highway, road, bridge, water line, sewer line, or other infrastructure, or any other improvement to real property, including moving, demolition, and excavating connected therewith. A fiber route is inside that on three independent grounds, and no argument is required to get there.

Then subsection (1) states the rule, and it is narrow: a provision purporting to indemnify the promisee against liability for damages arising out of bodily injury or property damage caused by or resulting from the sole negligence of the promisee or indemnitee, its agents or employees, is against public policy and void. A shared-fault strike is not a sole-negligence event. On private work, therefore, the practical posture is that the clause survives and the obligation is real.

Subsection (2) is where Michigan separates itself. When a public entity contracts with a contractor for the construction, alteration, repair, or maintenance of any such improvement, including excavating connected therewith, it shall not require that contractor to defend the public entity or any other party from claims, or to assume any liability or indemnify the public entity or any other party, for any amount greater than the degree of fault of the contractor and its subcontractors. A provision executed in violation of the section is void. Subsection (4) defines public entity expansively — the state and its agencies, cities, villages, townships, counties, school districts, intermediate school districts, authorities, community and junior colleges, and their employees and agents.

For fiber that split matters more than it would in most trades, because the same crew alternates between private ISP subcontracts and municipal or grant-funded builds, often in the same season. On one the transfer is largely enforceable; on the other it is capped at your proportional fault by force of statute, and the cap covers the duty to defend as well as the duty to indemnify. Establishing which regime a job sits in is not a legal nicety here, it is the first underwriting fact.

One absence is worth naming. §691.991 contains no insurance provision whatsoever — no savings clause preserving insurance contracts, and no treatment of additional-insured status. Most states that reach this subject say something about insurance one way or the other. On private work that silence leaves the certificate requirement untouched by the statute. On public work the question is genuinely open, because subsection (2) speaks of requiring a contractor to “assume any liability” beyond its degree of fault, which is broader language than indemnity alone; whether it reaches a transfer routed through an insurance requirement is not answered on the face of the section, and we have not found authority settling it. That is a question to put on the table before signature.

A dig law that shields the careful and prosecutes the concealer

Michigan’s underground damage regime is the MISS DIG Underground Facility Damage Prevention and Safety Act, Act 174 of 2013, at MCL 460.721 to 460.733. Notice periods look much like everywhere else, so the notice period is not the interesting part. What the act does with responsibility and with conduct is.

Compliance defeats a bad mark, not just a missing one. MCL 460.729(2) provides that an excavator that complies with the act is not responsible for damages that occur to a facility that is improperly marked, not marked, or determined to be within the safe zone. The middle category is the valuable one. A great many damage-prevention statutes protect a contractor only where the operator failed to mark at all, leaving the far commoner case — a facility marked, but marked in the wrong place — to be fought on the facts. Michigan legislates it. The condition attached is your own compliance with the act, which means the value of the shield is exactly the quality of your locate documentation.

Two enforcement tracks, and one is criminal. MCL 460.731(1) makes it a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year or a fine of not more than $5,000 or both, to knowingly damage an underground facility and fail to promptly notify the owner or operator; to knowingly damage a facility and backfill or otherwise act to conceal the damage; or to willfully remove or destroy stakes or other markings, unless the removal happens after the work is complete or as an expected consequence of it. Separately, MCL 460.731(2) allows the commission, on complaint or its own motion and after notice and hearing, to order a person other than a governmental agency to pay a civil fine of not more than $5,000 for each violation, and to require reasonable training to assure future compliance in addition to or instead of the fine.

Read those two provisions together and the shape of Michigan risk becomes clear. Hitting a line is a civil matter and, if you located properly, potentially not your responsibility at all. Hiding that you hit one is a crime. The distance between those outcomes is measured in the first hour after the drill head stops, and it is a training and reporting question rather than an insurance question — which is precisely why it belongs in the risk conversation rather than only in the policy.

Where that leaves a Michigan program

The contractors who reach us in Michigan are usually mid-project, holding a certificate a prime has refused and an agent who cannot explain why re-issuing it will not help. What is usually happening is that the two parties are arguing from different halves of the same statute. A prime accustomed to private work sets its requirement against a rule that voids only sole-negligence indemnity; a contractor who last read the statute on a municipal job remembers a proportional-fault cap that applies to public entities and not to this contract. Both are describing §691.991 accurately. Until someone establishes which subsection governs the project in hand, the certificate is being negotiated against two different laws.

Because the answer depends on ownership, a Michigan program has to be built to the harder of the two cases rather than the average of them.

Pollution liability is untouched by any of this. Neither §691.991 nor the MISS DIG act says anything about a drilling-fluid release reaching soil or groundwater, and the general liability form is drafted to exclude it, so that exposure is carried entirely by the placement rather than shared with the statute. General liability has to be specified against the private-work case, where the indemnity survives largely intact. Contractors equipment deserves its own attention because §460.729(2) addresses responsibility to the facility owner and says nothing about your own damaged tooling or the days lost while an operator investigates.

Three checks run on a Michigan file before we quote. We identify the owner of each project in the schedule, because subsection (2) either applies or it does not and there is no middle. We read the insurance requirement separately from the indemnity clause, since the statute governs one and is silent on the other. And we look at how locate records are kept, because in this state that documentation is what converts §460.729(2) from a provision into a defense.

A Michigan note for contract review. Licensing here runs through the Michigan Electrical Administrative Board (LARA), but the license is not what sets your obligation — the contract does, and which contract you are holding decides which half of §691.991 you are living under.

MCL 691.991 splits by who owns the project and the MISS DIG Act by what the crew did afterwards. Both stop at the bore; our Michigan fiber contractor insurance page does not.

Why Fiber Optic Guard Insurance

On a Michigan file the work is specific: sort the project schedule by owner type before pricing anything, because §691.991 splits there; read the insurance requirement on its own terms given that the statute never mentions insurance; and build the pollution line to an exposure neither statute limits. If your contract is with a public entity, send it first — subsection (2) may already be capping an obligation the document still describes in full.

Frequently asked questions about Michigan directional drilling insurance