Commercial Liability Insurance Claims in California
You can suffer harm from a business or a professional in multiple ways, including physical, mental, emotional, and/or financial harm. If you have been harmed by a business, claims are typically filed with the commercial insurance company but can be filed directly against the company, too. If you have been harmed by a professional’s acts or omissions to act, check the following page for details. These types of cases can get tricky and complicated, especially because there may be more than one defendant. Only an experienced attorney will know what to look for and how to approach it. And it’s our job to connect you with one of these attorneys so you don’t have to go through the trouble.
What Is Commercial Liability in California?
When you walk into a mall to go shopping, you expect the premises to be safe. When you go to work each day, you expect the office to be safe. When you conduct business with a small company in your community, you expect the premises to be safe as well. Even when you go to the gym or take your kids to indoor parks, you expect the premises at all of these places to be safe and that you or your kids are safe from any kind of harm.
But things happen. A sidewalk outside a boutique shop may have overgrown roots that present a tripping hazard. A trampoline at a trampoline park in and around the Los Angeles metro area may have a defect. Injuries can happen. And when they do, you are entitled to compensation if it’s the fault of another person or entity, like the business owner. Fortunately, property and commercial owners carry liability insurance. Unlike automobile owners, however, it’s not always required in California. That said, to prevent financial loss, most businesses obtain it.
Commercial liability insurance in California is also known as business liability insurance, general liability insurance, and commercial general liability insurance. Regardless of what the policy is called, this type of insurance is highly recommended but is not mandatory. The insurance is meant to protect businesses from financial loss if an injury occurs on the premises and a personal injury claim or lawsuit follows. Commercial liability insurance is different from workers’ compensation. Workers’ compensation is required of almost all businesses in California, and it is used when an employee is injured on the job. Commercial liability insurance covers, among other things, non-employee visitors to the property who may sustain an injury by negligence, an intentional act, or a product defect.
Commercial insurance typically is categorized according to property insurance and casualty insurance. The first deals with just that: property. The second is the type of insurance that would cover the costs of a personal injury for which the company, business, or property owner is liable.
There are four types of casualty insurance lines that are often subject to personal injury claims:
1. Commercial automobile
2. Commercial general liability
3. Commercial umbrella
4. Workers compensation.
These types of insurance cover things like:
- Bodily injury, where a person suffers from physical harm or wrongful death;
- Personal injury, where a person suffers is harmed via libel or slander, among other injuries; and
- Property damage, where a person’s property is damaged.
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Commercial Automobile
Commercial automobile coverage is akin to auto insurance you must keep on your car except this is coverage for a commercial vehicle. The coverage limits are based on the business, but typically companies who have company vehicles have commercial automobile insurance ranging between $500,000 and $1,000,000. This type of coverage covers both bodily injury and property damage.
For example, if a local pizzeria offers delivery services, the company––if smart––would have obtained adequate commercial automobile insurance. Imagine now that a company driver is in a hurry to deliver pizzas on a busy night and runs a stop sign. In doing so, the pizzeria driver T-bones your car, causing serious property damage as well as serious bodily injury to the driver and a passenger. The pizzeria would be the likely defendant via vicarious liability since the employee caused the collision in the course of the job. So, you as the plaintiff would be able to file a claim to the insurance company. If negotiations do not go well, you could also file a lawsuit against the at-fault driver, pizzeria, and perhaps insurance company, too.
Commercial automobile insurance will usually cover wrongful acts caused by negligence, gross negligence, and recklessness, but will typically not cover intentional acts.
Commercial General Liability
Commercial general liability is the standard type of commercial liability policies that most businesses obtain. This type of insurance has three specific types of coverage:
1. Premises liability, which covers property damage and bodily injuries caused by a hazardous condition on the property (e.g., a sinkhole without any type of warning or fencing to keep people away or a slip and fall accident at a nursing home due to water on the floor) or an operation being undertaken (e.g., the release of toxic chemicals);
2. Products liability, which covers defects caused by manufacturing, design, or warning defect and the defect causes bodily injury or property damage (e.g., Roundup weed killer, the defect of which is glyphosate in the product proven to cause cancer); and
3. Completed operations, which covers bodily injury or property damage resulting from a company’s completed work––it’s insurance that covers a contractor’s liability to a third party for property damage or bodily injuries (e.g., construction of a boutique is completed but two months after it, a visitor/shopper leans against a railing, and the railing collapses, injuring the visitor).
Commercial general liability insurance will usually cover wrongful acts caused by negligence, gross negligence, and recklessness, but will not cover intentional acts. This insurance usually has a list of excluded items for the sake of coverage. The policy’s coverage limits are dependent on the type of business. Plus, each of the above types of coverage can have different policy limits.
Commercial Umbrella
Commercial umbrella policies are important because they provide one additional means for the company to protect itself financially and offer the victim an additional path to recovering fair and just compensation for property damage, bodily injury, and/or personal injury. Commercial umbrella insurance is just that: an umbrella that offers additional resources when a claim goes beyond the limits of liability provided by the other forms in insurance.
Workers Compensation
Workers’ compensation, as already mentioned above, is required for most businesses per California Labor Code § 3700. It only applies to employees and not visitors, guests, shoppers, or other third parties who may be on the premises lawfully. If an employee is injured or falls ill while working or because of the work he or she does, workers’ compensation provides financial security.
Find the Most Suitable Attorney for Your Legal Matter
An experienced personal injury lawyer in Los Angeles who has represented clients in personal injury cases where the defendant is a business or another commercial company will be critical to your case. These types of personal injury cases can go one way or the other based on technical details as much as the legal details. So, an attorney with more than mere legal knowledge of the issues is important, and that technical knowledge is acquired through experience. Contact us if you have questions or want to find an attorney with the skills and resources you need to file a successful personal injury claim against a business.
