Wucher. Usury is a criminal offence in Germany, not only a civil one. Taking grossly disproportionate advantage of someone’s weakness is prosecuted. The state treats an imbalanced bargain as a matter for the criminal courts.
law
Product liability
Produkthaftung. German product liability law makes a manufacturer liable for damage caused by a defective product regardless of fault. The obligation runs to the product itself, not to the care taken in making it.
Clarifying the facts
Sachverhaltsaufklärung. Clarification of the facts. German procedural law obliges a court to establish what actually happened before applying any rule to it, and the phase has its own name and its own stage in the judgment. The facts are settled first, as separate work.
The shop closing law
German shop opening hours were governed by federal law from 1956, and Sunday closing remains the rule across the country. Shops are shut. Not quiet — shut. A Sunday in a German town is a different kind of day, enforced by statute.
Contrary to good morals
Sittenwidrigkeit. Section 138 BGB voids a legal transaction that offends good morals, and specifically one where a party exploits another’s predicament, inexperience or weakness to obtain a conspicuously disproportionate advantage. A German contract can be void because the bargain was too one-sided. Not misrepresented, not coerced — just too unequal.
Protected by method
German and European law protects certain products by reference to how they are made — the Reinheitsgebot for beer, protected designations for food, process patents in chemistry. The method is part of what the thing is.
The statutory warranty
Gewährleistung. German law gives a buyer a statutory two-year warranty against defects present at delivery, independent of any manufacturer guarantee, and for the first twelve months the defect is presumed to have existed at handover. The seller must prove otherwise.
Salary transparency laws
More than a dozen American states now require employers to publish pay ranges in job postings, most of that legislation passed since 2021. The remedy chosen for pay inequity was to make the numbers visible.
The warranty
American products compete on warranty terms — length, coverage, whether it transfers with the vehicle, whether there is a deductible. The promise is not that the product will not fail. It is about what happens when it does.
Good faith
Treu und Glauben. Section 242 of the German Civil Code requires performance according to good faith, with regard to common usage. One sentence, and it is among the most heavily used provisions in German law.
Courts apply it to strike down conduct that is formally within a contract but unacceptable in substance. The agreement being signed does not settle whether it is enforceable.