General Liability and Commercial General Liability Coverage
General Liability and Commercial General Liability Coverage
This domain tests the coverage A, B and C structure of the CGL, the occurrence trigger, and the exclusions that most often defeat a certificate holder's expectations.
The three coverage agreements
- Coverage A, Bodily Injury and Property Damage: bodily injury, sickness, disease, death, and physical injury to tangible property, including loss of use.
- Coverage B, Personal and Advertising Injury: offences such as libel, slander, wrongful eviction, and infringement of copyright or trade dress in an advertisement.
- Coverage C, Medical Payments: no-fault, expenses incurred within three years of the accident, subject to a small sublimit, excluding persons covered elsewhere.
Trigger and key exclusions
- Occurrence form: injury or damage must occur during the policy period even if the claim is made later. Continuous-trigger and damage-in-progress reasoning matters in construction defect.
- The insurer's duty to defend is broad and is a duty, not a limit; it ends when limits are exhausted.
- Standard exclusions: expected or intended injury, contractual liability, your work, your product, impaired property, recall, employers liability, pollution, professional services.
- The insured-contract exception restores coverage for leases, easements, sidetrack agreements, and a written contract assuming another party's liability for bodily injury or property damage. It does not make that other party an insured.
Worked example
A tenant signs a lease indemnifying the landlord and requiring additional insured status. A visitor trips in the lobby. The tenant's CGL responds under coverage A through the insured-contract exception, but the landlord is not an insured unless an endorsement such as CG 20 11 (managers or lessors of premises) is attached. A certificate listing the landlord changes nothing on its own.
Traps
Believing additional insured status is automatic; confusing coverage B with employment practices liability; assuming the duty to defend survives exhaustion of limits; overlooking the employers liability exclusion when workers compensation is discussed.