8.11 Personal Injury Coverage

• Jurisdiction: Arizona

Standard general liability policies provide coverage for "personal injury." Personal injury is defined as injury, which is other than bodily injury that arises from offenses enumerated within the policy. These offenses are as follows: (a) false arrest, detention or imprisonment; (b) malicious prosecution; (c) wrongful eviction from, wrongful entry into, or invasion of the right of private occupancy; (d) oral or written publication or material that slanders or libels a person or organization or disparages a person or organization's goods, products or services; or (e) oral or written publication or material that violates a person's right of privacy.

Wrongful entry or wrongful eviction presupposes a landlord-tenant relationship.^[433] "Wrongful eviction" involves the actual interference with possessory rights to real property.^[434] The legal definition of an eviction is similar: an "eviction" is "[t]he act or process of legally dispossessing a person of land or rental property." Insurance coverage is limited to liability for purposeful acts aimed at dispossession of real property by someone asserting an interest in the property.^[435] A "wrongful eviction" occurs when the person recovering the property had no right to dispossess the other party from the property.^[436] A "wrongful entry" occurs when there is a trespass onto the claimant's real property.^[437...