GuyWithQuestions
Member
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2006
- Messages
- 451
I was looking at a question on Yahoo Answers. A girl and her boyfriend were at a bar. The bouncer asks them to leave, so they start leaving. The girlfriend tells the bouncer that he's pathetic and so the bouncer grabs the girl by the arm and pours her own drink over her head. She then spits in his face, and probably because he knows he can't beat the girl he starts to physically beat up the boyfriend. There were some police patrolling the streets outside and the two told them about what happened and they said they weren't going to do anything about it. The girl at Yahoo Answers was asking if she pressed the issue further, if that would be legally considered the bouncer assaulting the boyfriend and if she would be in trouble for spitting in the bouncer's face after he poured the drink on her head.
My question about all this is: what if when the bouncer was attacking the boyfriend, he used self-defense moves on the bouncer and broke the bouncer's arm, or used something like pepper spray on him? You have to be an innocent victim in order to use self-defense as a defense to using force on someone. The boyfriend wasn't the one who spit on the bouncer, but he was with the person who did; and I know if criminal #1 goes with criminal #2 with the intent of committing a crime and the criminal #2 kills someone, criminal #1 could get in legal trouble because he was with criminal #2 with the intent of committing a crime in the first place. But then at the same time, a reasonable and prudent guy doesn't reasonably expect that when he goes to a bar with a girlfriend that she's going to spit on a bouncer's face. He didn't have the intent of causing trouble, and he wasn't involved in the spitting after the bouncer had a drink poured on her head. Or another example, you're walking along with someone, then the other person starts throwing rocks at passing cars. One car stops and a guy with a baseball bat comes running out at both of you. You had "no reasonable expectation beforehand" that the person you were walking with was going to do this. The rock thrower runs in another direction, and the person with a baseball bat is running straight towards you, not the rock thrower. What would you be legally justified in doing in situations like that? No matter how rare and how much you like to stay away from stupid people, everyone has at some point in time in their life happened to be with someone who stupidly offends someone while in public, even if they didn't reasonably know it was going to happen beforehand. Someone gives you a ride, then they start swearing at the car next to them at a traffic light, etc, no matter how rare.
So what would the legal aspects of a situation like the girlfriend/boyfriend/bouncer be? Especially if the boyfriend used like force in self-defense against the bouncer when he started physically beating him? I was just curious?
My question about all this is: what if when the bouncer was attacking the boyfriend, he used self-defense moves on the bouncer and broke the bouncer's arm, or used something like pepper spray on him? You have to be an innocent victim in order to use self-defense as a defense to using force on someone. The boyfriend wasn't the one who spit on the bouncer, but he was with the person who did; and I know if criminal #1 goes with criminal #2 with the intent of committing a crime and the criminal #2 kills someone, criminal #1 could get in legal trouble because he was with criminal #2 with the intent of committing a crime in the first place. But then at the same time, a reasonable and prudent guy doesn't reasonably expect that when he goes to a bar with a girlfriend that she's going to spit on a bouncer's face. He didn't have the intent of causing trouble, and he wasn't involved in the spitting after the bouncer had a drink poured on her head. Or another example, you're walking along with someone, then the other person starts throwing rocks at passing cars. One car stops and a guy with a baseball bat comes running out at both of you. You had "no reasonable expectation beforehand" that the person you were walking with was going to do this. The rock thrower runs in another direction, and the person with a baseball bat is running straight towards you, not the rock thrower. What would you be legally justified in doing in situations like that? No matter how rare and how much you like to stay away from stupid people, everyone has at some point in time in their life happened to be with someone who stupidly offends someone while in public, even if they didn't reasonably know it was going to happen beforehand. Someone gives you a ride, then they start swearing at the car next to them at a traffic light, etc, no matter how rare.
So what would the legal aspects of a situation like the girlfriend/boyfriend/bouncer be? Especially if the boyfriend used like force in self-defense against the bouncer when he started physically beating him? I was just curious?