Contracts & remedies · updated August 2026
A Cleaner Broke an Expensive Monitor. Who Actually Pays?
The common answer — “their general liability covers it” — is usually wrong. Standard commercial general liability contains a care, custody or control exclusion that excludes damage to property in the insured's care, and to the particular part of any property being worked on. A cleaner who knocks a monitor off a desk while dusting it sits squarely inside that exclusion.
What Actually Pays, in Order
| Source | Covers | Typical limits |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial general liability | Damage to property not in the cleaner's care, custody or control — e.g. they cause a leak that ruins a workstation across the room | $1M / occurrence, $2M aggregate |
| Care, custody & control endorsement | The gap — damage to property they were handling | $10,000–$50,000, with a deductible |
| Janitorial / fidelity bond | Employee theft only — not accidental damage | Varies |
| Inland marine / installation floater | High-value equipment scenarios | Scheduled |
| Your own property insurance | Often the real payer, subject to deductible; your carrier may subrogate | Your policy |
| The vendor, out of pocket | Very common for a single monitor — a $600 claim is not worth the claim history | — |
Scenarios, Worked
| What happened | Who responds |
|---|---|
| Cleaner knocks a monitor off a desk while dusting it | CCC exclusion likely applies → CCC endorsement, or vendor pays out of pocket |
| Mop water shorts a power strip, frying three machines across the room | Likely CGL — those machines were not in their custody. Arguable. |
| A laptop goes missing overnight | Janitorial / fidelity bond — employee theft |
| Cleaner leaves a wet floor unsigned; a visitor falls | CGL bodily injury |
| Floor machine damages the building's marble lobby | CGL plus the building owner's claim; possible CCC argument on the worked-on area |
A janitorial bond covers employee theft and costs a cleaning company on the order of $11 a month — about $126 a year. It is the cheapest possible trust signal and it does nothing at all about accidental damage. The phrase “bonded and insured” is the most overused and least examined claim in this industry.
The Sharpest Question a Buyer Can Ask
“Do you carry a care, custody and control endorsement, and at what limit?”
Most janitorial vendors do not. The ones who do will tell you the limit immediately, because they pay for it. It is a single question that reveals more about a vendor's professionalism than any brochure.
The Claims Procedure to Require
- Incident reported to you within a defined number of hours of discovery
- Photographic documentation and a written incident report
- Repair or replacement decision within a defined number of business days
- A stated threshold below which the vendor simply pays with no deductible to you
Publishing a claims SLA is unusual. Ask for one anyway — it is the difference between a resolved incident and a three-week email thread.
Last reviewed August 2026. Figures for prevailing wage and regulatory schedules change on 1 January and 1 July — we re-verify this page each cycle.
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