Malicious Prosecution

Malicious prosecution is the wrongful initiation of a legal proceeding, civil or criminal, carried out intentionally and maliciously, without probable cause, and ending in a result favorable to the person against whom it was brought. In common law jurisdictions it functions as an intentional tort, though criminal prosecutors and judges generally hold immunities that shield them from tort liability arising from it, and merely filing a lawsuit or pursuing an appeal, even a frivolous one, does not by itself amount to actionable abuse of process. Courts have generally preferred to address frivolous litigation through measures that speed up resolution of the original case and through sanctions for delaying conduct, rather than by expanding the grounds on which a later malicious prosecution claim can be brought, as the California Supreme Court noted in a 2009 decision. Usage varies by jurisdiction: some reserve the term malicious prosecution specifically for wrongful criminal proceedings and use malicious use of process for the equivalent wrong in civil cases. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/