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

Bodily Injury (BI)

Under the ISO CGL, bodily injury means 'bodily injury, sickness, or disease sustained by a person, including death resulting from any of these at any time.' Key points:

• It requires a physical component. Pure mental anguish, humiliation, or emotional distress without a physical injury is generally not BI under the standard definition (some courts and endorsements expand it).
• Death is included as a consequence of the physical injury, not a separate trigger.

Trap: Slander that merely embarrasses someone is not bodily injury. It may be personal injury under Coverage B — a different insuring agreement.

Property Damage (PD)

Property damage means:

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

Notes that drive exam questions:

• Tangible is the keyword. Electronic data is expressly not tangible property in the standard CGL — so corrupted data, by itself, is not PD (cyber policies fill this gap).
• Loss of use is covered even with no physical harm: blocking access to a store's parking lot causes covered loss of use though nothing is broken.

Coverage A vs. Coverage B — Two Separate Agreements

The ISO CGL contains distinct insuring agreements with separate limits that do not add together:

• Coverage A — Bodily Injury & Property Damage Liability: the negligence-based core.
• Coverage B — Personal & Advertising Injury Liability: covers a list of named intentional-type offenses, NOT negligence.

Personal & Advertising Injury — Named Offenses

Coverage B responds only to these enumerated offenses:

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

Trap: Patent and trademark infringement are EXCLUDED from Coverage B — only copyright, trade dress, and slogan in an advertisement are covered.

Limits of Liability — Split vs. Combined Single Limit

Split limits show three numbers, e.g., 100/300/50 (in thousands):

• $100,000 — maximum BI per person
• $300,000 — maximum BI per accident (all people combined)
• $50,000 — maximum PD per accident

Worked example (100/300/50): A covered accident injures three people with claims of $120,000, $90,000, and $60,000, plus $70,000 in property damage.

• Person 1: capped at $100,000 (per-person limit)
• Person 2: $90,000 paid in full
• Person 3: $60,000 paid in full
• BI subtotal = $250,000, under the $300,000 per-accident cap — all BI paid
• PD: $70,000 claim capped at $50,000
• Total insurer payment = $100,000 + $90,000 + $60,000 + $50,000 = $300,000

A Combined Single Limit (CSL) — say $300,000 — is one pooled amount for BI and PD with no per-person sublimit, giving more flexibility on severe single-victim claims.

Per-Occurrence vs. Aggregate Limits on the CGL

Commercial liability uses a layered limit structure that the exam tests with a declarations-page reading. A typical ISO CGL shows:

Trap: Once the general aggregate is exhausted by paid claims, the policy stops paying even if the per-occurrence limit is untouched. The products-completed-operations aggregate is a separate bucket that is not drained by ordinary premises claims.

Split Limits vs. Combined Single Limit — When Each Wins

The choice between split limits and a combined single limit (CSL) changes who is protected.

Severe single-victim claim: Limits of 100/300/50 versus a $300,000 CSL, with one victim claiming $280,000 in BI.

• Split limits: BI per person caps at $100,000 — the insured personally owes the remaining $180,000.
• CSL of $300,000: the full $280,000 is paid from the single pooled limit.

The CSL is more flexible for catastrophic single-claimant losses because there is no per-person sublimit. Split limits can be cheaper but expose the insured when one victim's injury is large.

Exam tip: When comparing the two, total the split limits is not the comparison — a CSL of $300,000 is broader than 100/300/50 even though both show '300,000' as a per-accident figure, because the CSL has no internal per-person or BI/PD walls.