CISR Commercial Casualty I cheat sheet

Negligence requires four elements: a duty owed, a breach of that duty, proximate cause, and actual damages - the claimant must prove all four.

Premises duties: invitees get reasonable care including inspection and warning of hidden hazards; licensees get warning of known hazards; trespassers get only avoidance of willful or wanton injury.

Res ipsa loquitur permits an inference of negligence when the injuring instrument was in the defendant's exclusive control and the accident would not ordinarily occur without negligence.

Pure comparative negligence reduces recovery by the plaintiff's fault percentage; modified forms bar recovery at 50% or 51%; contributory negligence is a complete bar.

Vicarious liability: employers are liable for employee torts within the scope of employment; hirers are generally not liable for independent contractors except for inherently dangerous work or nondelegable duties.

Strict liability applies without proof of fault to abnormally dangerous activities, defective products, and harm from wild or known dangerous animals.

Compensatory damages split into special (medical bills, lost wages) and general (pain and suffering); punitive damages punish egregious conduct and are often excluded by insurance.

A statute of limitations sets the filing deadline from the injury or discovery date; a statute of repose bars claims after a fixed period regardless of discovery.

Workers compensation is the exclusive remedy against the employer, but an injured worker may still sue responsible third parties.

Coverage A pays sums the insured is legally obligated to pay as damages for bodily injury or property damage caused by an occurrence, and includes defense.

Coverage B responds to personal and advertising injury offenses (libel, slander, false arrest, wrongful eviction, use of another's advertising idea); no occurrence is required.

Coverage C pays medical expenses for third parties injured on the insured's premises or by its operations regardless of fault, subject to a per-person limit.

Separate limits: each occurrence, general aggregate (all Coverage A and B except products-completed operations), products-completed operations aggregate, personal and advertising injury limit, damage to premises rented to you, medical expense limit.

Supplementary payments - defense costs, bail and appeal bonds, and lost earnings up to a stated daily amount - are paid in addition to limits and do not erode them.

Exclusion a bars injury or damage expected or intended from the standpoint of the insured; exclusion b bars contractual liability, except for insured contracts such as leases of premises.

Exclusion k (damage to your work) does not apply when the damaged work, or the work out of which the damage arises, was performed by a subcontractor on the insured's behalf.

Occurrence policies respond to injury or damage during the policy period; claims-made policies respond to claims first made during the period, subject to a retroactive date and extended reporting periods.

The separation of insureds condition treats coverage as if each insured had its own policy, but limits are shared and exclusions are applied to the claim at issue.

Additional insured status is created only by policy endorsement; a certificate of insurance confers no rights and cannot amend the policy.

CG 20 10 (2004 and later editions) covers scheduled owners, lessees, or contractors for ongoing operations only; completed operations requires a separate endorsement such as CG 20 37.

CG 20 11 gives managers or lessors of premises status for liability arising out of the premises leased to or managed for the named insured.

CG 20 33 and CG 20 38 grant automatic status when a written construction agreement requires it; CG 20 33 is limited to ongoing operations.

An additional insured is covered only for liability arising out of the named insured's work or premises, so the additional insured's own independent negligence may fall outside the endorsement.

Primary and noncontributory wording and waivers of subrogation require their own endorsements (for example CG 20 01 and CG 24 04); contract language alone does not amend the policy.

Blanket endorsements extend status to any entity the named insured agreed in writing to add; scheduled endorsements name specific entities.

Severability or cross-liability wording is needed before one insured can recover from another insured under the same policy.