Malicious prosecution allows someone who was sued or criminally charged to turn around and sue the person who initiated that earlier proceeding, when it was brought without probable cause, for an improper purpose, and ended in the original defendant's favor. It is one of the few torts built entirely around the misuse of legal process itself, and it exists in real tension with the strong public policy favoring open access to courts — which is why its elements are demanding and courts apply them carefully to avoid chilling legitimate litigation and criminal complaints.

The claim can arise from a prior criminal prosecution or from a prior civil lawsuit, though many jurisdictions impose an added requirement in the civil context — a 'special injury' beyond the ordinary burden of defending a lawsuit — precisely because civil litigation is a normal and expected cost of doing business, and courts are wary of turning every lost lawsuit into grounds for a new one.

A plaintiff generally must establish: (1) the defendant initiated, procured, or continued a prior judicial proceeding (criminal or civil) against the plaintiff, (2) the proceeding terminated in the plaintiff's favor, (3) the defendant lacked probable cause to bring or continue the proceeding, (4) the defendant acted with malice — an improper purpose other than bringing the alleged wrongdoer to justice or vindicating a legitimate legal right, and (5) the plaintiff suffered damage as a result.

Favorable termination generally must reflect on the merits or at least be consistent with the plaintiff's innocence — a dismissal on a technicality unrelated to the merits, or a settlement, is often not sufficient in many jurisdictions, and the U.S. Supreme Court has clarified in the criminal context that a plaintiff need not show an affirmative indication of innocence, only that the prosecution ended without a conviction, in a decision that narrowed but did not eliminate the favorable-termination requirement's demands.

Probable cause here asks whether the defendant had an objectively reasonable belief, based on the facts known at the time, that the plaintiff was guilty of the crime charged or liable on the civil claim asserted. It is judged on what the defendant knew or reasonably should have known when the proceeding was initiated, not on how the case actually turned out; losing the underlying case does not by itself mean the defendant lacked probable cause to bring it.

Malice does not require personal hatred; it means the proceeding was brought for a purpose other than bringing an offender to justice or legitimately vindicating a right — for example, to harass, to gain a business advantage, to extract a settlement through the pressure of the charge itself, or out of a grudge unrelated to the merits. Malice is often inferred circumstantially from a lack of probable cause combined with other evidence of an improper motive, though most jurisdictions require some proof beyond the mere absence of probable cause standing alone.

Because ordinary civil litigation imposes cost and stress on every defendant, a substantial number of jurisdictions require a civil malicious-prosecution plaintiff to show a 'special injury' beyond the usual expense, time, and reputational harm of defending a lawsuit — such as an arrest, seizure of property, or an injury to reputation or credit of a kind not necessarily suffered in every defended suit. Other jurisdictions have relaxed or abandoned this requirement, so its application varies significantly by state.

This is closely related to, but distinct from, the tort of abuse of process, which does not require favorable termination or lack of probable cause but instead focuses on misuse of legitimately issued process for a collateral purpose after the proceeding has begun.

In Juricratic, malicious prosecution is modeled as a sequential claim path where each element gates the next: favorable termination first, then probable cause, then malice, then damages, with a separate special-injury dial that activates only in jurisdictions requiring it for civil underlying suits. Because the probable-cause element is judged at the time the proceeding was initiated rather than in hindsight, the simulation lets you fix what the original defendant actually knew at that moment as a distinct input from what later discovery revealed, so you can see how much of the claim's strength depends on facts available at filing versus facts that only emerged afterward.