Commercial General Liability Concepts and Coverage (ISO CG 00 01)
The CGL domain tests how the ISO occurrence form is assembled and how its pieces interact: insuring agreements, who qualifies as an insured, limits, exclusions, and conditions. Questions typically ask whether a loss is covered, which limit pays, and whether defense costs erode that limit.
The three insuring agreements
Coverage A pays sums the insured becomes legally obligated to pay as damages for bodily injury or property damage caused by an occurrence - an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions. Coverage B responds to personal and advertising injury: offenses such as false arrest, malicious prosecution, wrongful eviction, libel or slander, invasion of privacy, and use of another's advertising idea in your advertisement. Coverage C pays medical expenses to others within one year of an accident on the insured's premises or arising out of its operations, regardless of fault, and is not liability coverage.
Limits and how they work
The declarations show an Each Occurrence limit, a General Aggregate (per policy period), a separate Products-Completed Operations Aggregate, a Personal and Advertising Injury limit, a Damage to Premises Rented to You limit, and a Medical Expense limit. Defense and supplementary payments - bail bonds, loss of earnings up to $250 a day, first aid - are paid in addition to the limits while the insurer defends.
Exclusions that drive exams
Core exclusions include expected or intended injury; contractual liability, with an exception for an insured contract such as a lease of premises, sidetrack agreement, elevator maintenance agreement, or easement with a municipality; liquor liability; workers compensation and employer's liability; pollution, with a narrow hostile-fire exception; aircraft, auto, and watercraft; damage to property in the insured's care, custody, or control; damage to your product; damage to your work; impaired property; and recall of products or work.
Worked example
A furniture maker ships a table to a hotel; the table catches fire and damages the ballroom, and the table itself is destroyed. The ballroom damage is property damage to other property, so Coverage A responds. The table is "your product" and is excluded. Because the table had left the maker's control, the claim falls under the products-completed operations aggregate rather than the general aggregate, and defense costs are paid on top of the limits until the claim is resolved.
Traps
"Expected or intended" is judged from the insured's standpoint, not a reasonable person's. Do not charge products claims to the general aggregate. The care-custody-control exclusion concerns property, not people, and fire damage to premises rented to the insured is covered only up to its own sublimit. Editions differ on the subcontractor exception to the "your work" exclusion, so read the form in force.