Usually covered
- A customer slips and falls at your business
- You damage someone else's property
- A product you sell injures someone
Common mistake
Your commercial liability policy probably doesn't cover your content
Creators, influencers, podcasters, streamers, publishers, media companies, journalists, and ad agencies often think their commercial liability policy protects them if someone sues over something they posted. Usually, it doesn't.
That policy, also called general liability, is built mostly for physical accidents. It has a small part for claims like saying something false about someone, but that part commonly comes with big restrictions. If making or publishing content is your business, or you run ads or websites for others, it is often excluded. Most policies also add extra wording that cuts out media and online content entirely.
Often left out
- Someone says your video, post, or episode spread something false about them
- A photographer, company, media outlet, musician or record label says you used their work without permission
- Someone says you shared their private life without consent
Media liability insurance is made for claims about what you publish.
Run a YouTube channel? See what YouTuber insurance covers.
Someone stealing or copying your work? See how Fight Back coverage works.
What a court said
A federal appeals court applied the media exclusion
Satellite TV counts as broadcasting
DISH Network v. ACE American Insurance Company
DISH bought a general liability policy from ACE that included the part for claims like saying something false about someone, plus the standard media exclusion. That clause removes that part for any business whose work is advertising, broadcasting, publishing or telecasting. Four TV networks later sued DISH for copyright infringement, and ACE refused to defend.
DISH argued it was not a broadcaster because its customers pay for a subscription. The court disagreed. It held that sending TV signals to paying subscribers is still broadcasting, so the media exclusion applied and ACE had no duty to defend.
No duty to defendThe network lawsuits settled, but DISH was left paying its own legal fees.
Those suits were about copyright, not defamation. The same exclusion applies to libel and slander claims under that part of the policy, so a defamation claim against a broadcaster hits the same wall. The Tenth Circuit reached the same answer for DISH in an earlier case against other insurers, DISH Network Corp. v. Arrowood Indemnity Co., 772 F.3d 856 (10th Cir. 2014).
Sources: Court opinion (Justia) · Court opinion (GovInfo PDF)