strict liability
noun · Gefährdungshaftung
Gefährdungshaftung for strict liability, liability without fault, but German law has no general strict-liability principle, no Rylands v Fletcher, it exists only where a statute creates it, § 7 StVG for vehicles, § 1 ProdHaftG for products, § 833 BGB for animals, and several of those carry Haftungshöchstbeträge, caps that fault-based liability does not. Verschuldensunabhängige Haftung is the descriptive term, right but wider than any single Tatbestand.
Which translation, when
Why
Strict liability in English law is a scattered set, Rylands v Fletcher for escaping things, statute for products and animals, and German Gefährdungshaftung is the same idea but built only from statutes, with no general clause behind them. There is no German Rylands v Fletcher, no principle that a dangerous activity carries liability without fault as such, so a claim rests on a named Tatbestand or it falls back to fault under § 823 BGB. The keeper of a motor vehicle answers under § 7 StVG, the producer of a defective product under § 1 ProdHaftG, the keeper of a luxury animal under § 833 Satz 1 BGB, though a working or farm animal lets its keeper exculpate, § 833 Satz 2, and railways, energy, aircraft, nuclear plants and pharmaceuticals each have their own statute. The feature English lawyers miss is the cap, many Gefährdungshaftung regimes limit the sum recoverable, the Haftungshöchstbeträge of § 12 StVG for instance, where fault liability under § 823 BGB is uncapped, so the strict route can pay less than the fault route for the same harm. So strict liability translated as Gefährdungshaftung is right only inside an enumerated statute, and outside it the concept simply does not exist.
Typical mistakes
- German law has no general strict liability, Gefährdungshaftung exists only under a named statute, § 7 StVG, § 1 ProdHaftG and others, so a strict-liability claim for an activity with no such statute falls back to fault under § 823 BGB.
- Several Gefährdungshaftung regimes carry a Haftungshöchstbetrag, § 12 StVG for instance, so the strict route can recover less than uncapped fault liability, a trade-off the English term does not signal.
- § 833 BGB splits, the luxury animal is strict under Satz 1 but the working or farm animal lets its keeper exculpate under Satz 2, so animal strict liability is not uniform.
What matters
Dangerous-activity and product claims meet an enumerated system: German Gefährdungshaftung attaches only where a statute says so, § 7 StVG, § 1 ProdHaftG, § 833 Satz 1 BGB, often up to a Haftungshöchstbetrag. The claim assuming strict liability for any hazardous operation has no German footing unless a specific Tatbestand covers it, and even then the recovery may be capped.
What the machine misses
Strict liability comes back as Gefährdungshaftung or verschuldensunabhängige Haftung in machine output, both right as far as they go, but a translation cannot supply the point that there is no general Gefährdungshaftung, only a list of statutory Tatbestände, § 7 StVG, § 1 ProdHaftG, § 833 BGB. So a strict-liability claim for a hazardous activity with no matching statute reads as sound when German law would send it back to fault under § 823 BGB, and the Haftungshöchstbeträge that cap several strict regimes vanish from a translation that treats strict liability as a single open principle.
Examples
| strict liability for products | die Gefährdungshaftung für Produkte |
| liability without fault | die verschuldensunabhängige Haftung |
| the keeper’s strict liability | die Halterhaftung nach dem StVG |
| a cap on liability | ein Haftungshöchstbetrag |