Malicious prosecution
The mere filing or maintenance of a lawsuit, even for an improper purpose, is not a proper basis for an abuse of process action.Declining to expand the tort of malicious prosecution, a unanimous California Supreme Court in the case of Sheldon Appel Co. v. Albert & Oliker, 47 Cal.3d 863, 873 (1989) observed: "While the filing of frivolous lawsuits is certainly improper and cannot in any way be condoned, in our view the better means of addressing the problem of unjustified litigation is through the adoption of measures facilitating the speedy resolution of the initial lawsuit and authorizing the imposition of sanctions for frivolous or delaying conduct within that first action itself, rather than through an expansion of the opportunities for initiating one or more additional rounds of malicious prosecution litigation after the first action has been concluded.In 2014, the Quebec Court of Appeal held that the contents of plea bargaining negotiations held in the context of criminal cases could be admitted as evidence in the context of a civil suit for malicious prosecution, despite the general evidentiary rule prohibiting adducing settlement discussions into proof at trial.More specifically, the Court held that introducing into evidence the contents of such negotiations was possible when it tended to demonstrate that the prosecution initiated or maintained criminal charges on the basis of improper motives.