Casualty Insurance Basics
Casualty questions test liability coverage: how fault is established, how limits stack, and how Oregon auto rules interact with liability and no-fault benefits.
Negligence and fault
Liability requires duty, breach, proximate cause, and damages. Oregon applies modified comparative fault: the claimant's damages are reduced by their percentage of fault, and the claim is barred when the claimant's fault is greater than the combined fault of the other parties. Damages include special damages (medical bills, wage loss) and general damages (pain and suffering), and must be proven with reasonable certainty.
CGL and limits
Commercial general liability provides Coverage A bodily injury and property damage, Coverage B personal and advertising injury, and Coverage C medical payments. Occurrence policies respond to injury during the policy period; claims-made policies respond to claims first made during the period, subject to a retroactive date. Limits include each occurrence, general aggregate, products-completed operations aggregate, and a per-person medical payments limit. Additional insured status and certificates matter.
Auto
Oregon requires minimum liability limits of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury and $20,000 for property damage. Personal injury protection pays medical and wage-loss benefits regardless of fault; uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage protects the insured when the at-fault driver cannot pay. Symbols on business auto policies define which autos are covered.
Worked example
A claimant has $100,000 in damages and is 20% at fault. Comparative fault reduces recovery to $80,000. The at-fault driver carries minimum 25/50/20 limits, so the per-person cap pays $25,000 of that $80,000; the claimant's own UM/UIM coverage may respond to the $55,000 gap, subject to its limits and the policy's UIM definition.
Traps
Confusing each-occurrence with aggregate limits; treating medical payments as requiring negligence; assuming claims-made coverage reaches claims reported after the reporting period; treating PIP as liability coverage.