We have a municipal risk, which will video tape town meetings and then give them to the local cable company. The cable company will put them on the public access channel. If we had a claim under personal injury as a result from the broadcast, would the insured municipality have coverage under the policy? Let's say a town board member and someone attending the meeting has a verbal shoot out. It is put on cable TV and becomes the talk of the town and the town gets sued over invasion of privacy, or some other tort.

The same town publishes a monthly newspaper. Would personal injury resulting from the “publishing” of these items be excluded by the policy?

It seems that the advertising liability exclusions are clear on the fact that if you are a business engaged in advertising, broadcasting, publishing, or telecasting you have no coverage. The personal injury insuring agreement and exclusions do not track with the advertising and appear to exclude any telecasting or publishing done by you or for you. Was ISO's intent to track the personal injury with advertising injury and exclude only if you are engaged in the business of telecasting or publishing?

Ohio Subscriber

A

Based upon the scenarios in your letter, we believe that the insured would have personal injury coverage. When the CGL form talks about the insurance applying to personal injury caused by an offense arising out of the named insured's business, it means just that. The named insured's business in your scenario is not broadcasting or telecasting; the named insured's business is running the municipality. The fact that the broadcasting that was done concerned the insured's business does not mean that the broadcasting itself was the insured's business or that such a broadcasting business was done by another party for the insured.

This is a fine line, perhaps, but the key point is that the business of the named insured is not advertising, publishing, broadcasting, or telecasting. If personal injury arises out of the named insured's business of governing that simply happens to be published or broadcast, the CGL policy would respond.