Have you encountered a person who leaves a swath of devastation in his or her wake? The wrecking ball does so because others clean up the mess while the wrecking ball moves on, oblivious to the consequences. In business and professional settings, wrecking balls keep insurance brokers, claims representatives and lawyers productively occupied.

Nearly everyone in risk-related professions has at least one war story to tell about a claim generator, an errors and omissions recidivist or a tort system frequent flyer. I recall a series of more than 40 lawsuits filed against a single insurance broker who had placed coverage for commercial fishing vessels with a non-U.S. company. There are plenty of very reliable and honest insurers based outside the U.S., of course, but this particular one was a start-up, and a thinly capitalized one at that. The policy year in question for the local fishing community produced a bumper crop of claims, ranging from deaths and dismemberments to fires aboard vessels to collisions. As the claim notices poured in by fax, the neophyte insurer became strangely silent in response and finally disappeared, leaving only the disconnected fax machine behind in its office.

And the broker? He left the business and moved far away to a resort community where his father owned property.