On behalf of Steve Sugarman:

 

Where there is a battery claim and the defendant asserts self-defense
but there was a reasonable mistake by the defendant (who thus injured an
innocent party), the defendant wins according to the ALI Restatement and
some old cases.

See Section 63 Restatement of Torts (Second) (1965), especially comment h,
illustration 7. The leading cases on this point are Courvoisier v.
Raymond, 23 Colo. 113, 47 P. 284 (1896) and Crabtree v. Dawson, 119 Ky. 148, 83 S.W.
557 (1904). In the Reporter's Notes, Prosser wonders whether the defendant
ought not bear the costs of his mistake.

In my very long article on the "necessity" defense (in which I attack
the VINCENT decision and the Restatement's endorsement of it), I use the
rejection of "strict liability" by the Restatement and these cases for
what could be termed trespass to the person as an example of how US law
seems inconsistent.

Steve Sugarman

 

--
Jason Neyers
Associate Professor of Law & 
Cassels Brock LLP Faculty Fellow in Contract Law
Faculty of Law
University of Western Ontario
N6A 3K7
(519) 661-2111 x. 88435