General Liability is a policy all business owners should have in their insurance portfolio. The General Liability policy offers coverage in several different areas, all on one policy! Let me explain how General Liability can work for you. Let's say you own a business, now there are many types of businesses but we are going to focus on two main types.
There is the Premises Liability or the Operations Liability. Premises is when customers come to your business location. The Operations is when you go to a customers home or business to perform your service. And some businesses may have a retail or wholesale operation as well as a service department. An injury can occur when someone is arriving or leaving your location, and a damages or injury can occur when you are going into someone's home or business to provide a service. Imagine a service person dropping a tool onto the tile in your entry hall and the tile shatters. How old is the tile? Do you have any spare tiles? If not, can new tiles be purchased? Or will the floor need to be removed and retiled since it cannot be matched? These types of things are covered under the General Liability policy.
The other portion of the General Liability policy is the Products and Completed Operations portion of the policy. What happens if a product you have sold is defective and injures someone? Well that is the manufacturer's problem not yours you say. Not really. So many goods come to the U.S. from overseas now days, so to sue the maker of that item it may require you to travel to their home country to file a lawsuit. So who is the next in line for a lawsuit? You the retailer!! The Products Liability portion of the General Liability would be there to help you with that claim. But what happens when a claim or damages arise after you have left a job site? Well that is the Completed Operations portion of the General Liability policy. Here is an example; you call a Plumber to replace the fittings in your bathroom. The plumber has to reconnect aka re-sweat the copper pipes under the sink. Now this is not an easy job when you consider there is wood and sheetrock in the cabinet in addition to the fact it is usually a small work area. Well a week or so later that joint that connected the new pipes and the old pipes fails!! You come home to an inch of water all throughout your bathroom, bedroom and down the hall. That is where the Completed Operations of the General Liability policy applies, the insurance should cover those damages.
There are other parts of the General Liability, but we can save those for a future discussion.