liability

Which translation, when

Why

German splits what English stacks into one word. Die Haftung is a state, the having-to-answer, it is limited, excluded, personal, and it builds the clause vocabulary, Haftungsbeschränkung, Haftungsausschluss. Die Verbindlichkeit is a thing, the individual debt, due, assumable, and at home on the balance sheet, § 266 Abs. 3 HGB. The plural sorts most sentences on its own, liabilities in accounts and asset deals are Verbindlichkeiten, while Haftungen as a free-standing plural lives only at the margins of banking and accounting German, the Haftungsverhältnisse noted under the balance sheet, § 251 HGB. The sentence worth memorising is § 13 Abs. 2 GmbHG, which uses both words correctly in one breath, für die Verbindlichkeiten der Gesellschaft haftet nur das Gesellschaftsvermögen, the debts belong to the company, the answering is done by its assets, and a translation that swaps the two rewrites either the debts or the exposure.

Typical mistakes

• Begrenzung der Verbindlichkeiten for limitation of liability caps the debts instead of the exposure, the clause is die Haftungsbeschränkung, and the residue rewrites what the parties negotiated.
• The plural test sorts most sentences, liabilities on a balance sheet or in an asset deal are Verbindlichkeiten, § 266 Abs. 3 HGB, while a free-standing plural Haftungen survives only at the margins, the Haftungsverhältnisse of § 251 HGB.
• Haften and schulden are different verbs, the company schuldet its Verbindlichkeiten and haftet with its assets, § 13 Abs. 2 GmbHG keeps the two apart in a single sentence.

What matters

Liability caps put the pair to work: the Seller’s liability is limited to the purchase price reads die Haftung des Verkäufers ist auf den Kaufpreis beschränkt, while the assumed liabilities of the same deal are die übernommenen Verbindlichkeiten. The version that caps Verbindlichkeiten has shrunk the debts on paper, a bookkeeping miracle no clause can perform.

Examples