Civil Liability

Civil Liability & Private Police

Civil liability is a very complex issue to prove in a court of law. To understand if someone may have liability for an action it is first important to understand the definition of civil liability as well as the many forms of liability that may affect a person or organization. Civil liability is defined by legal-dictionary as “potential responsibility for payment of damages or other court-enforcement in a lawsuit, as distinguished from criminal liability, which means open to punishment for a crime” (Legal-Dictionary, n.d.). Duhaime also defines civil liability as “a civil law requirement to compensate another because of an unlawful injury to his/her person or property” ("Civil Liability", n.d.).

By reading through both of these definitions it could be said that civil liability is a fairly loose term. That being the case it may be somewhat easy to prove liability depending on a person’s ability to articulate their specific loss and how the accused party contributed to that loss.

More often than not there is a criminal charge or case that would precede a civil liability case. The outcome of that criminal trial is not a reflection of whether or not a civil case will be filed or successful but may be a determining factor in deciding if a case will be filed at all. For example if a person is charged with a negligent homicide and is convicted of it, the victim’s family will probably have a better chance of filing and winning a civil liability case because of the criminal case and its outcome.

A place where civil liability is a pretty common place suit is in relations to private police officers. Private police officers are just essentially ‘hired guns’, which are either directly hired by a company or contracted out to protect the interests of private property owners. Another place it is becoming more common place to find private police officers is protecting national monuments and bus stations located on public property...