General liability insurance protects against four main kinds of claims: property damage, bodily injury, personal injury and advertising injury (e.g. libel). While any policy can be customized to protect both you and your business against other liabilities, these four will usually set the standard for coverage in almost any standard business liability insurance policy you purchase.

What Liability Insurance Safeguards You Against

In this article, we’ll take an in-depth glance at each one of these types of claims and how to figure out your business’ exact degree of exposure to each one. Background on each claim type follows.

Advertising Injury Claims

Legal courts have historically struggled to come to agreement on the precise meaning of advertising injury as it pertains to businesses, but most permissible interpretations include damages attributable to slander, libel, privacy violations, copyright infringement, and disparagement of goods, products or services. For the purposes of commercial business liability insurance, these damages are generally defined as having took place in the course of the protected client performing some form of advertising activities.

In contrast to what many people who run businesses believe, you may be the subject of an advertising injury claim even if your company does not do much advertising. Some of the most-frequently filed advertising injury claims stem from activities such as making a disparaging remark about a competitor’s service or unauthorized use of a photo or reference to a competitor’s product in an advertisement.

Regardless of the amount of advertising your business does, if you ever makes public claims or comments about your competitors (even if it is just comparing your product or service to theirs), then you need to include advertising injury insurance in your general liability policy.

Bodily Injury

Accidents that cause visible physical harm to a customer or other third party can result in a bodily injury claim. In order for the incident to be covered by your business liability insurance, it must either occur at your place of business, or as a result of a negligent act committed by your or one of your employees in the course of conducting company business.

Common examples of accidents that result in bodily injury claims range from injuries caused to a third party in a traffic accident involving one of your employees, to someone falling down and suffering an injury while in your place of business. If you do business with third parties, these often-expensive claims come can from the most unlikely of sources.

Regardless of the type of business you operate, bodily injury coverage must be included in your insurance policy.

Personal Injury

Personal injury claims differ from bodily injury claims in that they do not require visible, physical harm to have occurred to the third party filing the lawsuit. The most common types of personal injury claims are for libel, slander, or anything else that inflicts emotional pain and suffering.

As one might guess, this type of claim is common and can be caused by a wide range of incidents. Disgruntled former employees, unhappy customers and any number of other victims represent the most likely plaintiffs and, even in cases where the charges hold no merit (i.e. frivolous lawsuits) the legal fees associated with defending against them can be quite high.

In short, much like bodily injury, personal injury insurance is an absolute necessity for every business regardless of their industry and level of interaction with the public.

Property Damage

Property damage is the fourth type of coverage included in most commercial liability insurance policies. Any damage caused by negligence to a third party’s property by you or one of your employees is covered by commercial general liability.

Again, property damage claims are a relatively common occurrence for most types of businesses that have a high level of exposure to the public. Something as innocent as a fender bender between two customers in your parking lot can potentially result in a property damage claim against your business, so this is definitely another area where you are better off carrying coverage regardless of your business’ location, industry, etc.

Is There Anything Else That Liability Insurance Protects You Against?

As technology becomes a bigger part of every business’ day-to-day activities, new types of liabilities are being created. For this reason, many insurance providers now offer the option to include cyber liability insurance as part of your standard policy, as well as several other types of technology-based coverage (eg Electronic Data Liability).

For a more comprehensive list of things that liability insurance protects you against, be sure to visit the author’s site on general liability insurance where you’ll find an even more useful info!