Commercial General Liability: Coverage A - Bodily Injury and Property Damage
Coverage A is the heart of the CGL form. It covers sums the insured becomes legally obligated to pay as damages because of bodily injury or property damage to which the insurance applies, caused by an occurrence within the coverage territory during the policy period. Key definitions drive the analysis: bodily injury means physical injury, sickness, or disease sustained by a person, including death; property damage means physical injury to tangible property (including loss of use) or loss of use of tangible property that is not physically injured. Occurrence means an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions.
Trap points appear constantly. First, intangible economic losses (lost profits, diminished value without physical damage, breach of contract) are not property damage. Second, the insured's own property and the cost of repairing defective work are excluded; the damage must be to other property. Third, the damage must occur during the policy period, and for continuous exposure the injury-in-fact trigger may fall in an earlier policy year. Fourth, expected or intended injury is excluded, so an accident requirement matters.
Rule of thumb: ask three questions - is there bodily injury or property damage as defined, was it caused by an occurrence, and did it happen in the coverage territory during the policy period? Worked example: a contractor's backhoe strikes a neighbors' underground utility line, causing a power outage that spoils a restaurant's food. The physical damage to the line is property damage; the spoiled food is property damage to other property; the restaurant's lost business income may be covered as loss of use resulting from physical damage to the line. If instead the contractor merely performed shoddy work with no damage to other property, Coverage A generally responds to nothing.