California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Kaiman v. Myers, 200 Cal.App.3d 955, 234 Cal.Rptr. 758 (Cal. App. 1987):
"For purposes of malicious prosecution, probable cause has historically been defined as a 'suspicion founded upon circumstances sufficiently strong to warrant a reasonable man in the belief that the charge is true.' [Citations.] 5 In both civil and criminal prosecutions, it 'has been further defined to be an honest suspicion or belief on the part of the instigator thereof, founded upon facts sufficiently strong to warrant the average person in believing the charge to be true.' [Citations, fn. omitted.] Thus probable cause has both an objective and a subjective element. (White v. Brinkman (1937) 23 Cal.App.2d 307, 312, 73 P.2d 254.) As the Restatement observes in the context of the malicious instigation of criminal proceedings, a 'private prosecutor can not have probable cause for initiating criminal proceedings against another if he does not believe that the accused was guilty of the crime charged against him. If he does not so believe, it is immaterial that the facts of which he had knowledge or belief were such that reasonable men might have regarded them as proof of the guilt of the accused. It is only when the prosecutor honestly but mistakenly believes
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