To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department will take steps to ensure that the complainants in cases in which a person has been acquitted of a crime do not pursue vexatious civil cases against the person so acquitted.
Answered on
7 July 2015
The Ministry of Justice has no plans to remove or limit the rights of a claimant to bring a civil claim against a defendant who has been acquitted of an alleged offence based on the same facts. Acquittal of a criminal charge does not rule out civil claims because criminal offences must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, while civil claims are adjudicated on the lesser standard of the balance of probabilities. Rules of court provide adequate protection for acquitted defendants in criminal cases by enabling the court to dismiss unmeritorious claims and, in the case of repeated unmeritorious claims, to ban vexatious litigants from bringing civil proceedings without its permission.