Duty to Ensure Safety (Verkehrssicherungspflicht)

Concept

The duty to ensure safety obliges anyone who creates, maintains, or is responsible for a source of danger – such as a property owner, the operator of a facility, or the organizer of a leisure activity – to take the measures that are reasonable and necessary under the circumstances to protect third parties from resulting harm. It is a central element of tort liability and frequently forms the basis for damages claims in the area of general and personal liability insurance.

Scope of Required Measures

The scope of the duty to ensure safety is determined by the standard of what a prudent, reasonable member of the relevant group would consider necessary and reasonable in the specific situation to avert foreseeable dangers; absolute safety excluding every conceivable risk is not required, as this would place a disproportionate burden on the party responsible for safety.

Relevance for Liability Insurance

A breach of the duty to ensure safety generally gives rise to a damages claim by an injured third party against the party responsible for safety, which can in turn be covered by liability insurance – such as personal, commercial general, or premises liability insurance; whether a breach of duty exists in an individual case is generally the subject of careful case-by-case judicial assessment.