Casualty Insurance Basics
Liability fundamentals
Liability insurance responds to the insured's legal liability for injury to others. Negligence requires duty, breach, proximate cause, and damages. Defenses include contributory negligence (bars recovery in strict states), comparative negligence (reduces the award), and assumption of risk. Damages are compensatory (special - medical bills and lost wages; general - pain and suffering) and punitive (often excluded).
Reading the limits
A split limit of 100/300/50 means $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence for bodily injury and $50,000 for property damage. A CSL gives one pool per occurrence. Occurrence policies cover injury during the policy period; claims-made policies cover claims reported during the period, back to the retroactive date. Supplementary payments - defense costs, bail bonds, loss of earnings - are paid in addition to limits.
Key coverages
Medical payments pays reasonable medical expenses regardless of fault, for a short window, without any liability determination. Personal and advertising injury covers libel, slander, and wrongful eviction, not bodily injury. Products-completed operations, additional insureds, and umbrella/excess layers are tested constantly. Workers compensation is an exclusive remedy: an injured employee generally cannot sue the employer, so the CGL excludes employee injury.
Traps
Med pay is not liability coverage and needs no negligence. The CGL's your work and damage to your property exclusions keep the policy from insuring the insured's own faulty product or premises. On a claims-made policy, a claim reported after expiration for an act before the retroactive date is not covered.
Rule of thumb
Trigger, then limit, then exclusion. Identify what event starts coverage - occurrence, claim, or report - before calculating what the policy pays.