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

The Insuring Agreements of the CGL

The ISO Commercial General Liability Coverage Form (CG 00 01) is built around three insuring agreements, each defining a distinct injury type. Knowing what each covers — and how their limits interact — is central to the casualty exam.

Bodily Injury (BI)

Bodily injury means physical injury, sickness, or disease sustained by a person, including death resulting at any time. It does not, by itself, include purely emotional or mental injury unless tied to a physical injury — a recurring exam distinction.

Property Damage (PD)

Property damage has two prongs:

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

Trap: Electronic data is not tangible property under the standard CGL definition, so corrupting a customer's data is generally not "property damage" without special endorsement.

Both BI and PD under Coverage A are triggered by an occurrence — "an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions." Expected or intended injury is excluded.

Personal and Advertising Injury (Coverage B)

Coverage B responds to specifically named offenses, not accidents:

• False arrest, detention, or imprisonment
• Malicious prosecution
• Wrongful eviction or invasion of the right of private occupancy
• Oral or written publication that slanders/libels or disparages goods, products, or services
• Oral or written publication that violates a person's right of privacy
• The use of another's advertising idea in your advertisement
• Infringing upon another's copyright, trade dress, or slogan in your advertisement

Because these are intentional-conduct offenses, Coverage B uses an "offense committed during the policy period" trigger rather than an occurrence trigger.

How the CGL Limits Stack

The CGL uses several limits that interact. Read them as a hierarchy:

Worked Aggregate Example

Assume a CGL with a $1,000,000 Each Occurrence limit and a $2,000,000 General Aggregate. Three unrelated covered occurrences in one year cost $700,000, $700,000, and $900,000. Each is within the per-occurrence cap, but the total demanded is $2,300,000. The insurer pays only the $2,000,000 General Aggregate, leaving $300,000 unpaid. This per-occurrence-versus-aggregate interplay is a classic numeric exam item.

Why the Three-Coverage Structure Matters

Separating BI/PD from personal & advertising injury lets the policy use different triggers and limits for very different exposures. A slip-and-fall (Coverage A, occurrence) is unlike a libel suit (Coverage B, offense). Coverage C medical payments is a small no-fault goodwill coverage that pays others' medical bills without proving liability, often heading off larger suits.

Bottom line: Match the injury to the right coverage — BI/PD to Coverage A, the named offenses to Coverage B, no-fault med-pay to Coverage C — then apply the correct per-occurrence and aggregate limits.

Bodily Injury vs. Property Damage

The CGL defines its core injury types precisely, and the exam tests the boundaries:

• Bodily injury (BI) — bodily injury, sickness, or disease, including death; many forms also include mental anguish arising from the physical injury.
• Property damage (PD) — physical injury to tangible property (including loss of use) or loss of use of tangible property that is not physically injured. Data and purely economic loss are generally not tangible property.

Personal and Advertising Injury Offenses

Coverage B (personal and advertising injury) responds to a closed list of named offenses, not to negligence. The tested offenses include false arrest/detention/imprisonment, malicious prosecution, wrongful eviction or invasion of privacy of a dwelling, libel/slander/disparagement, oral or written publication that violates privacy, copying another's advertising idea, and infringement of copyright, trade dress, or slogan in an advertisement.

Why the Distinction Drives Coverage

Worked scenario: A store's ad copies a competitor's slogan and a customer slips on a wet floor. The slip-and-fall is bodily injury under Coverage A; the slogan copying is an advertising injury offense under Coverage B. Routing each loss to the correct coverage and limit — rather than lumping them together — is exactly what the exam is testing when it mixes a physical-injury fact with an advertising offense.

Loss of Use and the "Impaired Property" Trap

Property damage includes loss of use of tangible property even when nothing is physically harmed — for example, a contractor blocking access to a store, idling its operations. But the CGL narrows this with the impaired property and your product/your work exclusions: if a defective product merely makes other property less useful and can be restored by repair or replacement, the resulting loss of use may be excluded as a business-risk matter. The exam distinguishes covered third-party loss of use from excluded business-risk losses on the insured's own product or work, which is the dividing line between insurance and a warranty.