Casualty Insurance Basics and Liability Concepts
Negligence and defenses
Liability rests on four elements: duty owed, breach of that duty, proximate cause, and damages. Defenses include assumption of risk and comparative fault. Washington applies pure comparative fault: a claimant's recovery is reduced by his or her own percentage of fault but is never barred, even above 50 percent. Contributory negligence as a complete bar is a classic distractor. Other theories include strict liability (wild animals, abnormally dangerous activities), vicarious liability (respondeat superior), contractual liability, and res ipsa loquitur, which lets a court infer negligence when the instrumentality was in the defendant's exclusive control. Damages are special (medical bills, lost wages), general (pain and suffering), and punitive, which Washington courts allow only in narrow statutory circumstances.
Commercial general liability
The CGL has Coverage A - bodily injury and property damage (occurrence form, or claims-made with a retroactive date), Coverage B - personal and advertising injury, and Coverage C - medical payments (no fault, first aid, limited time window). Key limits: each occurrence, general aggregate, products-completed operations aggregate, damage to premises rented, and medical expense. Supplementary payments sit outside the limits. Learn the exclusions that generate questions: expected or intended injury, your work, your product, impaired property, contractual liability (except an insured contract), and employer's liability. Umbrellas sit above underlying policies and can drop down; excess policies only follow form.
Washington workers' compensation
Washington is a monopolistic state fund: employers obtain coverage from the Department of Labor and Industries, not a private carrier. Commercial packages therefore exclude Washington workers' compensation, and producers place it through L&I or a qualified self-insurance program.