Warp wrote:
> Fredrik Eriksson <fe79}--at--{yahoo}--dot--{com> wrote:
>> Acquitted. He was not sued though; he was tried on criminal charges.
> 
>   I'm not acquainted with the legal terminology. What's the difference?

Criminal charges is when the government tries to put you in jail for 
something. A lawsuit is when a private individual tries to get you to 
give them money for something.

If you're in a car accident, you might get a lawsuit from the other 
person who wants you to pay their medical bills.

If you intentionally try to run someone down, you'll get criminal 
charges of attempted murder or some such, and it'll be the government 
(and not the person you tried to run down) that will be giving you trouble.

Lawsuits fall into "contract law" and "torts."  Contract law comes up 
when you break an agreement with some other party. "Torts" are when you 
don't have a prior agreement. So "contract law" covers things like (say) 
warranties and buying something that never gets delivered and stuff like 
that.  A "tort" would be someone at the store leaving a broom across the 
stairs that you trip over and hurt yourself, or spilling hot McD's 
coffee in your lap.

In the USA, there are different legal standards, since the government is 
presumed to have so much more money and power than an individual. A 
lawsuit between private individuals can't lead to jail time, so whoever 
provides a "preponderance of evidence", which is to say a bit more than 
50%, wins.  For something with jail time, you need "beyond a reasonable 
doubt", i.e., no reasonable person could doubt that you're guilty.

And then you have "felony" and "misdemeanor", the first of which is 
possible jail time more than a year, the latter of which is jail time 
necessarily less than a year.  (Like, say, murder verses vandalism.)

I'm not a lawyer, I know virtually nothing about law outside the USA, 
and none of this likely applies to you. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message