If you own a small business, you need to have general liability insurance. General liability insurance covers your company against customers' lawsuits if they are injured or property is damaged. You can also purchase coverage for other types of claims, such as product liability and employer's liability. For example, general liability insurance will protect your company from a lawsuit if a customer slips and falls on a spill in the store, a vendor's delivery truck crashes into your office building, or an employee accidentally breaks a mirror while cleaning. In order to have protection from these types of accidents, you need general liability insurance. In this article, we'll cover how general liability insurance protects your company and why it's so important.
What Is General Liability Insurance?
General liability insurance is a type of insurance that protects your company from being sued by customers. For example, suppose a customer is injured in your business; your general liability insurance will protect your organization and help cover the costs involved.
Why Do You Need General Liability Insurance?
In the event of a lawsuit, general liability insurance will protect your company from having to pay on behalf of a customer who was injured on your property. It's important to have protection from these types of lawsuits because you don't want to end up paying for someone else's injury.
In addition, commercial general liability insurance can cover legal costs that may arise from a lawsuit. In the event that you are sued and found liable, general liability insurance will cover the cost of defending your business in court. General liability insurance can also help you if someone sues for claims relating to things like product defects, copyright infringement, or intellectual property infringement. For expert advice on choosing the right commercial general liability insurance, check out The Hartford for their comprehensive cover options.
What Does General Liability Insurance Cover?
There are two types of general liability coverage. First, there's property damage coverage, which will cover for any physical damage to someone else's property that your business causes. For example, if your employee accidentally damages a customer's car while cleaning the parking lot, property damage coverage will help pay for repairs.
The other type of general liability insurance is personal injury protection. Personal injury protection covers any legal expenses that arise from a lawsuit over a customer being injured at your company. For example, if a customer slips and falls because they didn't see a spill in the store from where they've been shopping, personal injury protection would cover legal costs to defend against a lawsuit.
In addition to those two types of coverage, some policies also offer additional protection for other incidents such as product liability or employer's liability. Product liability protects you against lawsuits arising out of faulty products sold by your company. Employers' liability protects you against lawsuits due to your employees causing an accident on the job.
Furthermore, there are some things that are not covered by general liability insurance, such as employee accidents. In the event of an employee accident, you would need workers' compensation insurance to protect your business and provide help to your staff in their recovery.
