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

The Covered Injury Categories

Liability policies do not cover "everything bad" — they cover specifically defined injury types. The ISO CGL (CG 00 01) splits coverage into Coverage A (Bodily Injury and Property Damage) and Coverage B (Personal and Advertising Injury), plus Coverage C (Medical Payments). Knowing the precise definitions is essential, because a claim is covered only if it fits a defined category.

Bodily Injury (BI) and Property Damage (PD)

Bodily injury means bodily harm, sickness, or disease, including death that results. Most ISO forms also include resulting mental anguish or emotional distress when it flows from physical injury.

Property damage means either:

1. Physical injury to tangible property, including resulting loss of use; OR
2. Loss of use of tangible property that is not physically injured (e.g., a building evacuated due to a neighbor's gas leak).

Trap: Tangible property only. Loss of purely economic/intangible value, or damage to data as such, is generally NOT property damage under standard forms. Coverage A is triggered by an occurrence — an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same harmful conditions.

Personal and Advertising Injury (Coverage B)

Coverage B responds to injury arising from enumerated offenses, not from an accident. The CG 00 01 lists seven:

1. False arrest, detention, or imprisonment
2. Malicious prosecution
3. Wrongful eviction, wrongful entry, or invasion of right of private occupancy
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

Trap: Coverage B is triggered when the OFFENSE is committed during the policy period, not by an "occurrence." Patent and trademark infringement are generally EXCLUDED (only copyright, trade dress, and slogan in your advertisement are covered).

CGL Limits, Aggregates, and a Worked Loss

The CGL declarations show six limits. They interact when multiple losses occur:

• Each Occurrence — most paid for any one occurrence (caps BI + PD combined).
• General Aggregate — annual cap for most losses (including Coverage B).
• Products-Completed Operations Aggregate — separate annual cap.
• Personal & Advertising Injury — per-person/organization limit.
• Damage to Premises Rented to You — fire legal, limited.
• Medical Payments — small per-person no-fault limit.

Worked example: Limits are $1,000,000 Each Occurrence / $2,000,000 General Aggregate. Three unrelated covered claims arrive: $800,000, $700,000, and $900,000. Each is under the $1M per-occurrence cap, but together they total $2,400,000. The general aggregate pays only $2,000,000, leaving $400,000 uninsured. This is why aggregate limits are exam-critical.

Loss of Use and the Trigger for PD

Property damage under the CGL has two prongs: (1) physical injury to tangible property, including the resulting loss of use; and (2) loss of use of tangible property that is not physically injured. The second prong is why a contractor who blocks access to a store — causing lost business — can trigger PD even though nothing was physically broken. The exam stresses that electronic data is generally not tangible property under the CGL, which is why cyber exposures need a separate policy.

The "Occurrence" Definition and Knowledge of Injury

Coverage A applies to BI/PD caused by an occurrence — defined as an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions. The injury must take place during the policy period and must not have been known to the insured before the policy began (the known-loss / known-injury provision). This prevents an insured from buying coverage for damage already underway. Expected or intended injury from the insured's standpoint is excluded — reinforcing that the CGL covers fortuitous, not deliberate, harm.

The Coverage B Offenses and Key Exclusions

Coverage B (personal and advertising injury) responds to enumerated offenses rather than accidents. The exam expects the categories: false arrest/detention/imprisonment; malicious prosecution; wrongful eviction or invasion of privacy of a room/dwelling the person occupies; oral or written publication that slanders/libels or disparages goods or services; violation of a person's right of privacy; use of another's advertising idea; and infringing on copyright, trade dress, or slogan in an advertisement.

Coverage B excludes injury caused by the insured with knowledge of falsity, injury arising out of breach of contract, and the knowing violation of another's rights — the deliberate-conduct theme again. It also excludes wrongdoing in the insured's own business of advertising, broadcasting, or publishing, which belongs on a media-liability policy.

Why the Injury Definitions Drive Coverage

Because the CGL insuring agreement promises to pay for "bodily injury" and "property damage" caused by an occurrence, the precise definitions decide whether a claim is even in the policy's scope before any exclusion is reached. Pure economic loss with no bodily injury or physical/loss-of-use property damage — such as a faulty product that simply fails to perform — generally falls outside Coverage A; it may be a breach-of-warranty matter the CGL excludes. Matching the alleged harm to BI, PD, or a Coverage B offense is therefore the first analytical step in any general-liability question.