What is the difference between bodily injury and personal injury?

There is a common misunderstanding between the terms Bodily Injury and Personal Injury when trying to understand Commercial Insurance. The terms sound the same but have much different meanings. In fact, if you look up the definition of Personal Injury, you will find something along the lines of ‘personal injury inflicted on a person’s body.’ If you perform an internet search, you will find dozens of Personal Injury Attorneys!

From a layman’s stand point, the terms Bodily Injury and Personal Injury are one in the same. However, if you were to review a Commercial Insurance Policy covering General Liability, you will find something vastly different. The definitions typically are as follows:

"BODILY INJURY" means bodily injury, sickness or disease sustained by a person, including death resulting from any of these at any time.

"PERSONAL INJURY" means injury, other than "bodily injury" arising out of one or more of the following offenses:

a. False arrest, detention or imprisonment;

b. Malicious prosecution;

c. The wrongful eviction from, wrongful entry into, or invasion of the right of private occupancy of a room, dwelling or premises that a person occupies, committed by or on behalf of its owner, landlord or lessor;

d. Oral or written publication of material that slanders or libels a person or organization or disparages a person’s or organization’s goods, products or services; or

e. Oral or written publication of material that violates a person’s right of privacy

As you can see, Personal Injury does not reflect any type of Physical Injury. Most Business Insurance Policies include Personal Injury. Typically, the Commercial Insurance Policy will cover Personal Injury with a separate limit. For instance, if you’re Bodily Injury Limit is $1,000,000. Per occurrence, your Personal Injury Limit will also be $1,000,000. Per occurrence.

Examples of Personal Injury Claims:

a. If an unauthorized person comes on to your premises and you call the police and have them arrested, you could be sued. If this person had no ill intentions towards you, then you and your business could be liable.

b. If you intentionally and maliciously have someone prosecuted because you do not like them and this action was in the course of your business, then you and your business could be sued.

c. If you are a landlord and you evict someone from the premises you leased to them, then you could be sued for wrongful eviction even if you feel you were in your right in evicting them. Also, many claims arise out of entering you tenant’s premises without proper notification. If your tenant is at home when you enter, you could be facing a serious problem.

d. If you write a malicious letter or advertise that your competitor’s operations or products cannot be trusted, you could be sued even if you feel that you are certain that you are correct. If you simply say malicious things about your competitor to a potential client, you could be sued.

To summarize, Bodily Injury claims are physical and Personal Injury claims, are not. Be careful what you say and do and Make sure that you have a proper Business Insurance Policy to cover these potential claims.

Our agency is one of the largest writers of Commercial Insurance in Houston and ranked as one of the top 25 Business Insurance agencies in Texas and in the top 100 nationwide.

By: Randy Croix, CIC

Steve Cooper provides ghostwriting, SEO article, website content and eBook services through http://www.curixinfotech.com. His professional bio is purposely short for this article.