What does criminal liability mean?
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.