The basic flaw in this whole argument is that, contrary to popular opinion, "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys" aren't separate classes of people, easy to tell apart. There are only good and bad actions... and negligent actions are not good.
As various other posters have pointed out, notably .22lr and Dr. Meyer, someone who shoots an innocent person pretty much loses his "Good Guy" status. At best, he becomes a "Negligent Guy," and it's entirely appropriate to sue him if you're the victim of his negligence.
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Originally Posted by usaign
Now lets say a man is about to shoot a 5 year old girl. I then double-tap some rounds into the man. Some of the bullets go through the man, go through the wall and hit John Smith in his foot. John now has a permanent injury to his leg where he limps and has pain.
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Your general argument is that the
circumstances ought to make a difference to whether or not the shooter should be sued. In this case, I think that you're saying that John should be willing to let the shooter off the hook because what he did was worthwhile: that John's foot injury was outweighed by saving the life of a little girl.
By this argument, it matters whether or not the shooter's intervention is effective.
What if the "Good Guy" shoots a bad guy who has a gun to the child's head and he pulls the trigger reflexively, killing the child?
What if the bad guy is is just nicked, and shoots the child because now he's really mad?
In each of these cases, the "Good Guy's" intervention has made things worse, even though his intentions were good.
So how much do the shooter's intentions matter?
Should John still choose not to sue him, just because his intentions were good? Even though John's foot injury is now just one among several bad outcomes of the shooter's intervention? (If the bad guy is killed or injured, that's still a bad outcome. The only entirely good outcome in this situation is that
no one gets hurt.)
I think one can argue that a bad outcome actually compounds the shooter's negligence, and that his intentions are irrelevant.
What if it turns out that the putative "Bad Guy" was a plainclothes policeman who was trying to protect the little girl: his gun was drawn, and he was holding her, but he was trying to remove her from some other situation? Now "Good Guy" has shot a cop
and injured John-behind-the-wall... and he is probably going to go to jail, never mind being sued for negligence. I doubt that the cops will be sympathetic when "Good Guy" says "But I was only trying to help!"
If good intentions were enough, there would be no such thing as liability for negligence.