8.4 Bodily Injury, Property Damage, and Personal/Advertising Injury

The CGL's Two Insuring Agreements

The ISO Commercial General Liability (CG 00 01 04 13) packages two distinct coverages, each with its own limit and its own definition of the injury it covers.

• Coverage A — Bodily Injury and Property Damage Liability (triggered by an occurrence)
• Coverage B — Personal and Advertising Injury Liability (triggered by an offense)
• Coverage C — Medical Payments (no-fault, small limit, no liability required)

Knowing exactly what each definition includes and excludes is the most heavily tested liability concept on the national exam.

Bodily Injury (BI)

Bodily injury means "bodily injury, sickness, or disease sustained by a person, including death resulting from any of these at any time." It covers physical harm. Standard ISO definitions historically exclude purely mental or emotional distress unless it arises from a physical injury — though mental anguish is increasingly added by endorsement.

Trap: Pure emotional distress with no physical injury is generally not "bodily injury" under the unendorsed CGL. Watch for it.

Property Damage (PD)

Property damage has two parts under the CGL:

1. Physical injury to tangible property, including resulting loss of use of that property; and
2. Loss of use of tangible property that is not physically injured.

The key word is tangible. The CGL definition states that electronic data is not tangible property, so corrupted or lost data is excluded from PD (specialty cyber forms address it). Likewise, loss of use of undamaged property — a road closed by your accident so a neighboring shop loses business — is covered PD even though nothing was physically broken.

Loss of Use Example

Your negligence shuts down a client's parking garage for repairs for two weeks. The garage loses $40,000 of revenue. Even though your work physically damaged only one ramp, the loss of use of the entire (undamaged) structure is property damage.

Personal and Advertising Injury (Coverage B)

Coverage B insures harm to non-physical interests caused by enumerated offenses — not by an occurrence. The CGL lists a closed set of offenses; if it isn't on the list, it isn't covered.

The seven personal and advertising injury offenses:

1. False arrest, detention, or imprisonment
2. Malicious prosecution
3. Wrongful eviction from, wrongful entry into, or invasion of the right of private occupancy of a room or premises
4. Oral or written publication that slanders or libels a person or organization (defamation)
5. Oral or written publication that violates a person's right of privacy
6. The use of another's advertising idea in your advertisement
7. Infringing upon another's copyright, trade dress, or slogan in your advertisement

Key Distinctions and Traps

• Coverage B is triggered by an offense committed during the policy period, not by an occurrence/accident.
• Patent and trademark infringement are NOT covered (only copyright, trade dress, and slogan in your advertisement) — a classic exam trap.
• Coverage B intentionally picks up several intentional torts (libel, slander, false arrest) that Coverage A's expected-or-intended exclusion would otherwise bar.

Coverage A vs. Coverage B Definitions

The CGL has two liability insuring agreements. Coverage A insures Bodily Injury (BI: physical injury, sickness, disease, including death) and Property Damage (PD: physical injury to tangible property, including loss of use, even of property not physically harmed). Coverage B insures Personal and Advertising Injury — a list of intentional-tort offenses that Coverage A's "occurrence" requirement would otherwise exclude: false arrest, malicious prosecution, wrongful eviction, libel/slander, invasion of privacy, copyright/slogan infringement in advertising, and use of another's advertising idea.

Loss-of-Use and the Tangible-Property Line

PD's loss of use prong is heavily tested: if a contractor blocks a store's entrance for a week without physically damaging it, the loss of use of undamaged tangible property is still property damage. But purely economic loss with no tangible property involved (lost profits standing alone) is generally not PD.

A second trap: data and software are often not tangible property under the ISO CGL, which is why cyber exposures need a separate cyber policy. And libel/slander land in Coverage B, not Coverage A — a frequent misroute on the exam. Coverage B requires the offense arise out of the insured's business, and excludes knowingly false statements and criminal acts.

Loss of Use and the Coverage B Offenses

Property damage includes physical injury to tangible property plus the loss of use of tangible property — even property never physically harmed. If a contractor's mistake closes a neighboring store for a week, the store's loss of use is PD though nothing was broken.

Personal and advertising injury (Coverage B) is a closed list of offenses, not accidents: false arrest/detention, malicious prosecution, wrongful eviction or invasion of privacy, oral or written publication that libels/slanders or violates privacy, copyright/trade-dress/slogan infringement in advertising, and use of another's advertising idea. Routing libel to Coverage B (not A) is the single most-missed CGL classification.

Data, Money, and the Tangible-Property Line

Because Coverage A's PD requires tangible property, several exposures fall outside it: electronic data is expressly not tangible property under the standard ISO CGL, so a data breach is a cyber exposure, not PD; purely economic loss (lost profit with no property involved) is generally not PD; and money stolen is a crime exposure. The exam plants a breach or a financial-only loss inside a liability question to see whether you will wrongly route it to the CGL. The correct answer points to cyber, crime, or professional liability, not Coverage A.