Product liability

Die Entwicklung works in two places in this list, and the compound der Entwicklungsfehler only makes sense in the second. The first is the one an English speaker expects: the development department, where engineers draw and test a product before it goes into production. A mistake made there is not an Entwicklungsfehler at all; it is a Konstruktionsfehler, and the maker answers for it. The second Entwicklung belongs to nobody. It is the development of science and technology as a whole, and an Entwicklungsfehler is a defect that the knowledge available when the product was put on the market could not have revealed. Under the German Product Liability Act the manufacturer is not liable for it. So the same word names the firm’s own work in one compound and the limits of everybody’s knowledge in the other — and which of the two is meant decides the claim.