CGL Exclusions, Conditions, Definitions, and Endorsements
The CGL exclusions do the heavy lifting in coverage analysis. Candidates should know the major ones: expected or intended injury; contractual liability (with an exception for insured contracts); liquor liability; workers' compensation and employer's liability; pollution; aircraft, auto, and watercraft; mobile equipment; war; damage to property (care, custody, and control; your work; your product; impaired property); damage to your product; damage to your work; and recall of products. Each exclusion has exceptions that restore coverage, and questions often hinge on those exceptions.
Conditions set the insured's duties: notice of occurrence or claim, cooperation, voluntary payments, and duties after loss. Definitions control meaning: occurrence, bodily injury, property damage, personal and advertising injury, insured contract, your work, your product, and coverage territory. Endorsements modify the base form: additional insured endorsements, primary and noncontributory wording, waiver of subrogation, and completed operations extensions.
Traps: reading an exclusion without its exception; confusing "your work" with "your product"; missing that the care, custody, and control exclusion applies to property in the insured's care; and overlooking that an additional insured endorsement may limit coverage to vicarious liability for the named insured's acts.
Rule of thumb: read the exclusion, then read its exceptions, then check definitions. Worked example: a roofer installs a roof that later leaks, damaging the building owner's interior. Damage to the roofer's own work (the roof) is excluded, but damage to other property (interior ceilings) may be covered. The "your work" exclusion bars the cost of repairing the defective roof itself, while the resulting damage to other property can fall back into coverage.