What kind of liability protection does personal injury liability insurance provide?

Personal injury liability insurance protects the policy owner's financial assets in the event that a personal liability claim is filed against them and they need to pay damages to the injured party. Anyone is exposed to the risk of being sued for torts such as slander and libel, invasion of privacy, unlawful prosecution, false arrest, unlawful eviction, copyright and patent infringement, etc.

There are some occupations, however, which are especially susceptible to the risk of violating someone's privacy or tainting somebody's reputation. Among those are media professionals whose writings can cause defamation of character or whose photos can be viewed as violation of one's privacy.

It is commonplace for famous people to sue media outlets for defamation of character or privacy violation, a fact which has made journalists much more vigilant and has encouraged a great number of them to purchase personal injury liability insurance. Similarly, private investigators can be sued for violating someone's privacy and home, police officers can be held liable for false arrest or malicious prosecution, and landlords - for unlawful eviction of tenants.

To safeguard their finances against third-party liability claims, the people exposed through their actions to the highest risk of being sued for personal injury should consider getting a general liability insurance policy. General liability insurance contains a coverage specifically designed to provide protection to the policyholder against personal injury liability claims.

Although the term personal injury is very often used collectively to refer to all kinds of losses, general liability policies make a distinction between bodily injury, property damage and personal injury. In the liability insurance terminological lexicon, personal injury is a non-material loss having to do with one's reputation or privacy, and encompassing torts such as invasion of privacy, unlawful arrest or search, defamation of character, malicious prosecution, etc.

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