Civil Law

Civil law is different from criminal law. After you have had to use force for self defense purposes and injured or killed your attacker, you must now be cleared of all criminal charges. Once you have won a criminal case (or avoided prosecution entirely) you should expect to face a civil suit.

The tenets of civil prosecution usually parallel those of criminal law in self defense matters. But the burden of proof is different in a civil court. A criminal charge must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and a civil charge need only to be proven by a preponderance of the evidence. Which means that a civil suit simply needs to be stronger than yours. So you could be cleared of criminal charges and still have to pay fines in a civil court.

In civil court, to make a case for battery the defender must show that the attacker made harmful or offensive contact and the attacker intended to bring such contact, and the attacker’s actions, in fact, caused the injuries he sustained from the self defense force of the defender.

If the attacker dies as a result of the injuries sustained from the defender’s self defense actions a wrongful death civil suit may be brought against him from the attacker’s estate.

In a country where it seems like everyone is suing everyone, if you are brought up on criminal charges relating to the use of force, you may well assume you will be sued also.

Click here to return to Self Defense Laws from Civil Law.

Click here to return to the home page.