Bodily Injury
Physical injury, sickness, disease, or death sustained by a person, including resulting mental anguish — a core insuring agreement term in CGL policies.
What It Is
Bodily injury, as defined in the standard ISO CGL policy, means bodily injury, sickness, or disease sustained by a person, including death resulting from any of these at any time. Many policies also extend the definition to include mental anguish resulting from bodily injury.
Bodily injury is one of the two core insuring agreement triggers under Coverage A of the CGL policy (the other being property damage). For the CGL policy to respond, the claimant must have sustained bodily injury caused by an occurrence during the policy period.
The definition is important because claims alleging only emotional distress, mental anguish without physical injury, or economic loss without bodily injury may not fall within the CGL's Coverage A insuring agreement. However, some of these claims may be addressed under Coverage B (Personal and Advertising Injury).
Why It Matters for Brokers
Brokers should understand the precise scope of the bodily injury definition because it directly affects whether a claim is covered. Increasingly, claimants allege "emotional distress" or "psychological injury" without a physical component, and the CGL policy's response depends on how the specific policy defines bodily injury. Some carrier-proprietary forms include broader language than the standard ISO definition, which can be advantageous for certain risk classes.
Real-World Example
A tenant in a commercial building is exposed to mold for six months, developing chronic respiratory illness. The tenant files a $275,000 claim against the building owner's CGL policy alleging bodily injury from sickness and disease caused by mold exposure. The CGL policy's bodily injury definition includes "sickness or disease," so the respiratory illness qualifies. However, the owner's policy also contains a mold exclusion endorsement, which ultimately bars the claim. The broker should have identified the mold exclusion and advised the client to purchase mold coverage buyback.
Common Mistakes
- 1Assuming all emotional distress claims are covered as bodily injury when many CGL policies require a physical injury component for Coverage A to respond.
- 2Not reviewing the specific bodily injury definition in carrier-proprietary policy forms, which may be narrower or broader than the ISO standard.
- 3Confusing bodily injury under CGL with bodily injury under auto liability — the definitions and coverages are different.
How brokerageaudit.com Handles This
Policy Checker extracts the bodily injury definition from every CGL policy and flags any deviations from the standard ISO definition. It identifies carrier-proprietary language that narrows or broadens the definition and notes these differences in policy comparison reports. Submission Intake includes the bodily injury definition scope as a comparison point when evaluating quotes from multiple carriers.