Malicious Prosecution Attorneys

Not every case is opened because the plaintiff or prosecution thinks they can win. Sometimes “winning” a case doesn’t mean a victory in court for the plaintiff, but rather witnessing the defendant face bankruptcy following their win. Lawsuits have one use from the outside, to hold people accountable, but in reality, there are many who knowingly and actively file suits without accountability in mind. These cases are called malicious prosecutions, and if you find yourself the victim of one, the attorneys at Barrett and Farahany in Alabama, Georgia, and Illinois can help.

What is Malicious Prosecution?

If a prosecutor’s office or another entity files criminal or civil charges against you, knowing they don’t have or will not find strong evidence against you, they may be filing them because they know the lawsuit will harm you in some other manner. This is malicious prosecution.

Malicious prosecution can be used to cause financial, mental, emotional, and/or social harm. This is because the victim may be disadvantaged when handling the undue stress and pressure of fighting an unfounded legal case. While evidence may be on the victim’s side, to the point that no judge is willing to allow it to see the court, the victim still needs funds to hire an attorney and deal with the stress and anguish of the case. Often, information about the victim can be released that’s private and sometimes false, which damages their reputation, adding to their injury.

Prosecutors and plaintiffs will do this to punish, weaken, or otherwise harm the victim when they know they have little to no chance of successfully defeating someone in court.

How Do You Defend Yourself?

You do not have to suffer malicious prosecution lying down. You can file counter lawsuits after the case you believe was malicious prosecution. To do this, you need a team of malicious prosecution attorneys with the experience and motivation to carry you through this hard time. You can find such attorneys at Barrett & Farahany in Alabama, Georgia, and Illinois.

How Do You Know You Are the Victim of Malicious Prosecution?

It can appear too difficult to prove that you are the victim of malicious prosecution because simply filing a suit you likely aren’t going to win isn’t malicious. People are allowed to be wrong and/or mistaken about their chances when filing legal cases. This means you have to be able to prove that they legally battled you with malicious intent with no reasonable belief that they would succeed in winning a legal battle.

To prove this, you and your legal team need to provide evidence of four elements:

The original plaintiff – and soon-to-be defendant – had no reasonable cause or justification to file the earlier claim against you.
The defendant had malicious intent when they filed against you, beyond what damages they claimed to be suing over. This does not mean that if they are aggressive to you in court that they are malicious. This means that they only had the intent to ruin or weaken you rather than win the court case.
The defendant has to lose the original case against you. If they win, then there is a court that believes their claims were not baseless. You can still file a lawsuit in response, but this would be a different type of case, not malicious prosecution.
You suffered damages due to this frivolous lawsuit. The amount of damages you incurred doesn’t matter when trying to prove malicious prosecution.

What Can Result From a Lawsuit Over Malicious Prosecution?

A lot of the damages from a malicious prosecution go beyond financial loss. They can damage your reputation, your mental health, and your ability to operate in society based on how the lawsuit over the original claim proceeded. When put into financial damages that the defendant (of the malicious prosecution case) can pay, the numbers can vary. For civil cases, you can help quantify and predict the defendants’ potential losses based on:

The time you wrongly spent in jail
Your lost wages
The cost of an attorney for the previous and current lawsuits
Future lost wages considering the damage to your reputation and mental health
The defendant’s profit if they ruined your business’s or place of work’s profitability as the goal or side effect of their malicious prosecution.

When it comes to criminal cases, prosecutors and law enforcement individually receive qualified immunity from malicious prosecution cases in most states. This does not mean that they are totally out of reach. You can still file a lawsuit against them as individuals, but you are under greater scrutiny.

Your legal team must be able to prove that the prosecution and law enforcement representatives acted outside of the scope of their employment and willfully engaged in unreasonable conduct. You can file a lawsuit against the prosecutor’s office and/or police department as a whole rather than the individual law enforcement representatives.

Don’t Suffer in Silence, Contact the Malicious Prosecution Attorneys at Barrett & Farahany

The court of law is not supposed to be weaponized as a tool so people can terrorize and ruin others. When their actions go unpunished, the system begins to fall apart. Our attorneys are here to help the victims of situations of malicious prosecution. You can rely on us to guide you through the legal proceedings and represent you and your hardships against those who tried to ruin you.

Don’t let someone, be it your employer, competitor, neighbor, law enforcement, or others, get away with using an unjust lawsuit to control your life. Contact our attorneys for help today.

Talk To An
Attorney Today

First Name(Required)

Last Name(Required)

Phone(Required)

Email(Required)

City(Required)

State(Required)

Company(Required)

How did you hear about us?(Required)

How would you like to be contacted?

How can we help?(Required)

CAPTCHA

By providing a telephone number, e-mail address, and submitting this form, you are consenting to be contacted by e-mail & SMS text message. Message & data rates may apply. You can reply STOP to opt-out of further messaging.

Barrett & Farahany

Phone

Existing Clients: 866-989-0120

Malicious Prosecution

What is Malicious Prosecution?

How Do You Defend Yourself?

How Do You Know You Are the Victim of Malicious Prosecution?

What Can Result From a Lawsuit Over Malicious Prosecution?

Don’t Suffer in Silence, Contact the Malicious Prosecution Attorneys at Barrett & Farahany

Talk To An Attorney Today

Barrett & Farahany

Georgia Office

Alabama Office

Illinois Office

Phone

Do you want to chat?

Talk To An
Attorney Today