If you cause injury or damage to people or things, you are personally liable pursuant to general principles of liability. Expensive mishaps can happen easily: you accidentally break a glass pane, knock a vase off the shelf in a shop, or cause an accident with your bicycle or even as a pedestrian. If this results in physical injury to someone, the perpetrator has to pay for the material damage but also damages for pain and suffering, hospital and rehabilitation costs and the injured person’s salary.
It is therefore recommended to take out a private liability insurance, which, depending on the facts of the case, will cover the costs.
