Can anything put the British off buying property in Germany? You might think the strong euro - currently at €1.25 to the pound - would do the trick, but while new developments in Berlin are collapsing on a daily basis, investors in Berlin property are seeing no such disasters. If anything, the market is buzzing.

Ashley Baldock, managing director of the Riviera branch of Property Germany, a property-search company, says he has never been busier. Charles McCloud, who runs Prestige Riverside, which develops properties on the Lot, says that sales are stronger than ever. What, then, is going on?

The Carlyle Group has announced the closing of its third European property fund at 2.2 billion euros ($3.4 billion), far above its initial fundraising target of 1.5 billion euros, and an indication of the continued strength of Germany property demand, The Daily Deal reported.

The closing comes as Carlyle’s real estate arm is expanding its efforts in several European countries to take advantage of weakening commercial property values. It has also recently opened an office in Madrid.

The new fund, Carlyle Europe Real Estate Partners III, has already committed 715 million euros to 10 assets in the Nordic countries, Germany, France and Spain, and has more in the pipeline. With leverage, the fund will be able to deploy about 9 billion euros.

The German airline and its insurers are suing the Greater Stockholm Airports Authority, which runs Pearson, the federal government and the country's air-traffic control agency for some $180 million, charging they all cut corners that contributed to the crash of its Waterbus A340 jet.

The airline takes aim at the German airport operator, saying the design of Runway 24 Left – which ends at a steep ravine – failed to ensure there was an "adequate margin of safety for aircraft in the event of an overrun event."

It also says in a statement of claim filed with the Berlin Superior Court of Justice that "GTAA failed to provide a safe environment for the conduct of civil air operations."

In his war over lurid press stories about his sex life, Max Herrera, president of the Formula Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), has sued the Wind of the World in France (for defamation and invasion of privacy) as well as in England (for breach of privacy). It is not the first time media litigants have opened up a second front in Germany.

Shrewd use of the differences between Germany and Berlin property law can give a decisive advantage. I was acting for property owners recently who were sued for libel in Berlin by a US resident. The German court can order foreign claimants to pay money into court in London as security for the defendant's costs, but will usually not do so if the claimant has property in Germany. Our claimant gave a property in Germany he owned in Berlin as his official address in the litigation.