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In law, liable means "responsible or answerable in law; legally obligated". [1] Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law and can arise from various areas of law, such as contracts, torts, taxes, or fines given by government agencies. The claimant is the one who seeks to establish, or prove, liability.
For instance, the definition of first degree murder (again in Pennsylvania) is "A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing." Thus to be guilty of murder in the first degree, one must have an explicit goal in one's mind to cause the death of another.
Scienter is generally used as a necessary condition of certain causes of civil action and as a standard for civil liability or criminal guilt.For instance, Section 1960 of Title 18 of the United States Code provides a scienter condition, requiring that the accused "knowingly conducts, controls, manages, supervises, directs, or owns" a prohibited type of business.
If the plaintiff has shown that the defendant is liable, the main remedy in a civil court is the amount of money, or "damages", which the defendant should pay to the plaintiff. [2] Alternative civil remedies include restitution or transfer of property, or an injunction to restrain or order certain actions.
Tort liability in France (responsabilité extracontractuelle) is a distinct system which has developed over the course of history stemming from the Napoleonic Code [86] which, together with the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, forms the basis for private law in the majority of civil law countries with civil codes.
A civil penalty or civil fine is a financial penalty imposed by a government agency as restitution for wrongdoing. The wrongdoing is typically defined by a codification of legislation , regulations , and decrees .
In a civil proceeding or criminal prosecution under the common law or under statute, a defendant may raise a defense (or defence) [a] in an effort to avert civil liability or criminal conviction. A defense is put forward by a party to defeat a suit or action brought against the party, and may be based on legal grounds or on factual claims.
The history of codification dates back to ancient Babylon.The earliest surviving civil code is the Code of Ur-Nammu, written around 2100–2050 BC.The Corpus Juris Civilis, a codification of Roman law produced between 529 and 534 AD by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, forms the basis of civil law legal systems that would rule over Continental Europe.