Casualty Insurance and Liability Coverage
Liability fundamentals
The CGL is the backbone of commercial liability. Coverage A pays sums the insured becomes legally obligated to pay as damages because of bodily injury or property damage caused by an occurrence (an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure). Coverage B covers personal and advertising injury (libel, slander, wrongful eviction, infringement in an advertisement). Coverage C pays medical expenses regardless of fault, subject to a per-person limit and a time window. Supplementary payments - defense costs, bail bonds, loss-of-earnings up to a daily cap - sit outside the limits of liability.
Limits and triggers
- Occurrence-form limits: each occurrence, general aggregate, products-completed operations aggregate, damage-to-premises-rented, and medical-expense limits.
- Claims-made forms respond to claims first made during the policy period, subject to a retroactive date and an extended reporting period. The wrong trigger analysis is the classic exam miss.
- Common exclusions: expected or intended injury, contractual liability (except insured contracts), your work, your product, employee injuries (workers' compensation), impaired property, and pollution.
- Nevada negligence: NRS 41.141 uses modified comparative fault. A claimant 50% or less at fault recovers damages reduced by their percentage; at 51% or more, recovery is barred.
Worked example
A shopper slips in a store. Damages are found to be $200,000; the jury assigns the store 60% and the shopper 40%. Reasoning: Nevada's modified rule lets the 40%-at-fault claimant recover $200,000 × 60% = $120,000, paid under Coverage A subject to the each-occurrence limit, after defense costs are handled as supplementary payments. If the shopper were 51% at fault, she recovers nothing.
Traps that cost marks
Treating medical payments as an admission of liability. Assuming defense costs erode the limit on a standard CGL. Confusing an occurrence form with a claims-made form and misreading the retroactive date. Ignoring that the general aggregate can be exhausted by earlier claims.