The
current Insurance Services Office (ISO) Commercial General
Liability (CGL) Coverage Form is comprehensive in nature. It
insures the bodily injury liability and property damage
liability exposures of commercial ventures. It may be written as
a monoline policy or combined with other lines of insurance to
form a Commercial Package Policy (CPP). This comprehensive
nature of the form eliminates having to select and group
individual or specific hazards, with the resulting potential
gaps in coverage. Coverage applies to:
-
Premises
liability arising out of the ownership, maintenance or use
of the premises;
-
Products
liability for goods and products manufactured, sold or
distributed;
-
Completed
operations liability for services provided or work done for
others;
-
Personal
injury liability and advertising injury liability of the
insured; and
-
Medical
payments coverage.
Each
of these coverages is subject to certain policy definitions,
exclusions and limitations.
The
basic CGL coverage form can be tailored with a number and
variety of optional forms and endorsements that broaden, delete,
restrict, add or modify the form's basic coverages to result in
a coverage form specifically designed for the individual
insured.
There
are two basic coverage form associated with a business liability
policy. The "occurrence" form. It covers losses where the injury or
damage occurs during the covered policy period, regardless of
when the insurance company is notified of the loss or claim. The
key to this coverage approach is the date of loss or the period
of time when the loss occurs. And the other is the "claims-made" coverage form. With this form, coverage
is triggered by the actual filing date or receipt of the claim,
in addition to the date or period of time in which the loss or
injury occurs. This form handles any covered loss or claim filed
during the policy period, regardless of when the actual loss or
injury occurred. This is subject to the retroactive date
indicated on the declarations. While the retroactive date can be
any date, for complete protection it should be the first date
that claims-made coverage was applied to the risk. This is
because an occurrence coverage form applies to any loss or
damage before that date. Claims-made coverage applies only to
covered losses occurring after the retroactive date.
