General Liability

Required Insurance for most VA Businesses

General Liability Insurance for businesses cover the costs of liability claims made against your business for personal injury, property damage and advertising claims.

General Liability typically covers:

• Property damage claims made against your business
• Personal injury claims made against your business
• Advertising injury claims made against your business
• Attorney fees related to settling covered claims
• Administrative costs to handle covered claims
• Court costs associated with covered claims
• Settlements and judgments for covered claims

General Liability usually does not cover:

• Costs of damage to your own business property
• Costs of personal injury claims made by your own employees due to work related incidents
• Costs of auto accidents caused by you or your employees while driving for work purposes
• Purposefully illegal or malicious acts

Judgments, settlements, lawyer and court fees can be extremely expensive. Even if you do not need to go to court, you will need to pay for legal counsel, administrative work by legal personnel and other unforeseen losses.

For most small businesses, this would cause their businesses to greatly suffer or close. Luckily, there are great policies available that will protect you against such great losses.

General Liability Insurance coverage can help pay for lawsuit expenses, which may include:

• Lawyer fees. These fees quickly add up as lawyers charge per hour.
• Court costs. Filing court documents is expensive and cannot be avoided.
• Administrative costs. Lawsuits involve lots of sharing of documents for lawyers to examine. That means shipping, processing, software, and photocopy charges.
• Settlements. Even if you are able to settle out of court, you may very well be responsible for paying the plaintiff, depending on what your lawyer recommends.
• Judgments. If you go to trial and lose, you must pay a court judgment or risk a judgment lien being placed on your business assets.

Virginia general liability insurance is required by the state for most business owners.

There are many businesses who should have general liability insurance they include:

• Businesses who have a store, office or building that’s open to the public, clients, and/or vendors
• Handle or work on or near client property.
• Advertise or do marketing for your business.
• Have a social media presence or use social media both personally and professionally.