Casualty Insurance Basics
Negligence
Liability coverage responds to legal liability for injury to others. Negligence requires duty, breach, proximate cause, and damages. Defenses and doctrines to recognize: contributory negligence (a complete bar, now rare), comparative negligence (pure or modified), assumption of risk, res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself), negligence per se (violation of a statute), attractive nuisance (children), and vicarious liability (employer liable for employee acts within scope). Strict or absolute liability is imposed without fault.
Damages
Special damages are economic (medical bills, lost wages); general damages are non-economic (pain and suffering); punitive damages punish. Liability policies generally do not cover punitive damages (state-law dependent) and never cover intentional injury.
Coverage structure
The commercial general liability policy is Coverage A (bodily injury and property damage), B (personal and advertising injury), C (medical payments - paid without regard to fault), plus supplementary payments (defense costs, bail bonds, loss of earnings) that usually sit outside the limits. Occurrence forms cover injury that happens during the policy period even if the claim arrives years later; claims-made forms cover claims made or reported during the policy period, limited by a retroactive date. Limits are per occurrence and aggregate; products-completed operations carries its own aggregate.
Umbrellas and excess
An umbrella drops down over gaps and sits excess over underlying limits, often requiring a self-insured retention when it drops down.
Traps: assuming medical payments requires negligence (it does not); confusing the retroactive date with the policy period; forgetting defense costs may be inside the limit on some professional policies.
Rule of thumb: no duty, no breach, no liability - test all four elements of negligence before selecting an answer.