tort
noun · unerlaubte Handlung
Unerlaubte Handlung for the tort, das Deliktsrecht for the field, and there is no general tort of negligence, German liability rests on three narrow pillars, § 823 Abs. 1 BGB for enumerated rights, § 823 Abs. 2 BGB for breach of a protective statute, § 826 BGB for intentional immoral harm. Delikt is the word, Tort an anglicism that says nothing to a German court.
Which translation, when
Why
English tort law is a list of named torts, German delict builds on three general clauses instead. § 823 Abs. 1 BGB protects an enumerated set, life, body, health, freedom, property and the sonstiges Recht, and pure economic loss is pointedly not among them, § 823 Abs. 2 BGB adds liability for breach of a Schutzgesetz, a protective statute, and § 826 BGB catches intentional damage contra bonos mores. Those three carry the general law, specific statutory torts and the separate strict-liability regimes aside, and there is no general duty of care whose breach sounds in damages the way English negligence does, which is exactly why pure financial loss so often has to travel through contract or § 826 BGB instead. The vocabulary carries the point, the field is das Deliktsrecht, the claim die unerlaubte Handlung, das Delikt the technical noun, and Tort is an untranslated anglicism a German court cannot use. Concurrence is freer than in some systems, a single event can ground contractual and delictual claims side by side, Anspruchskonkurrenz, so the two regimes coexist rather than exclude. And tortious is deliktisch or aus unerlaubter Handlung, never the invented tortiös the engine sometimes prints, so the adjective is translated, not transliterated.
Typical mistakes
- Tort is an anglicism in German, the field is das Deliktsrecht and the claim die unerlaubte Handlung, §§ 823 ff. BGB, so the untranslated word names nothing to a German court.
- There is no general tort of negligence, § 823 Abs. 1 BGB lists the protected rights and omits pure economic loss, so an English negligence claim for financial loss alone often has no direct delictual home and must route through § 823 Abs. 2 or § 826 BGB.
- Tortious is deliktisch or aus unerlaubter Handlung, not the non-word tortiös, so the adjective must be translated rather than transliterated.
What matters
Cross-border claims must find the pillar: a delictual claim in Germany stands on § 823 Abs. 1 BGB, on a Schutzgesetz under § 823 Abs. 2 BGB, or on § 826 BGB, and the same facts may ground a contract claim in parallel, Anspruchskonkurrenz. The pleading that sues simply in tort has not yet chosen which of the three German pillars it stands on, and pure economic loss narrows the choice sharply.
What the machine misses
Tort survives untranslated in machine output or arrives as the non-word tortiös, and German has a precise vocabulary it ignores, das Deliktsrecht for the field, die unerlaubte Handlung for the claim. The system underneath never surfaces, German delict is three narrow pillars with no general tort of negligence, so the translated claim points at an English list of torts the BGB does not keep, and the reader looks in vain for the duty of care.
Examples
| the law of tort | das Deliktsrecht |
| a claim in tort | ein Anspruch aus unerlaubter Handlung |
| tortious liability | die deliktische Haftung |
| tort and contract | Delikt und Vertrag |
More notes on these sections
negligence Fahrlässigkeit
duty of care Verkehrssicherungspflicht
defamation üble Nachrede