What does criminal liability mean?

Answer 1

From a legal perspective, criminal liability is a subset of liability that implies the law was broken and harm may have been done to a person. Example: If a person owns a car and it has a defect that causes it to run into a person, the car owner is liable but not criminally liable (the maker of the car may be criminally liable, however, if they knew about the defect and did nothing to correct it). An easy rule of thumb is that criminal liability means State charges, while general liability could mean a civil case or even an informal resolution.