Battery

All Huntington Beach Cases heard at the West Justice Center, 8141 13th Street, Westminster, CA 92683-4576

Assault and Battery are often mentioned in the same sentence; however, there is a substantial difference. Assault means you appear to be about to strike someone else and you put them in reasonable apprehension of fear; a battery means you have actual physical contact with the person.

A battery can be as minor as a shove or as serious as putting someone in a coma.
Battery occurs when someone hits someone else without their consent. A fight in a bar where one person punches another would be a battery. A battery can be charged as a misdemeanor or a felony. The District Attorney usually decides on a misdemeanor or a felony based on the degree of injury of the victim. The more serious the injury the more likely it will be filed a felony. Generally a broken bone, laceration requiring stitches or other similar type of injury or worse will result in a felony filing.

Batteries and Assaults can be charged as felonies or misdemeanors. If charged with a misdemeanor, the client cannot do more then one year in jail while felonies can send a person away to prison for more then one year.

Huntington Beach Battery Attorney Will Bruzzo has successfully defended many battery cases. The most common defense to these charges is self defense. This complete defense to the crime requires that the client have used force to reasonably defend himself or another person. If the Prosecution cannot disprove that the client acted in self defense then the client should be found NOT GUILTY of all charges.

Huntington Beach Battery Attorney Will Bruzzo has successfully used the defense of self defense to defend his clients. In one case, Mr. Bruzzo’s client was actually the first one to throw a punch which caused the victim to go into a coma when he hit the pavement. Despite the fact that Mr. Bruzzo’s client threw the first punch, Mr. Bruzzo was still able to effectively use Self Defense by showing that his much smaller client, reasonably thought he was about to get hit and so he acted preemptively in hitting first. The client was acquitted of all charges and walked free. See People v. Mark Vasquez. Contact the Law Offices of William W. Bruzzo for any battery case at (714) 547-4636.