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If you work in stores and shopping malls, you will most likely deal with angry customers daily. It can be somewhat challenging, but it is what it is. There are differences among enraged clients. While some maintain their composure and voice their displeasure in a cool, collected manner, others snap, yell, and might even hit you, leading to store employee confrontation.
Although everyone is aware of the saying that customers are always right, it’s easy to lose sight of this and allow feelings to take control in heated situations.
On the other hand, this is a bad idea because it’s never a smart idea to argue with a customer, as it can hurt your brand by causing store employee confrontation. But you can retaliate in self–defense if a customer hits you hard. However, situations like this can be very tricky.
Shopper’s Store Employee Confrontation
In a widely shared video on the internet, two men were seen fighting in a mall. One of the men was a shopper, and the other was a worker in the store. You can see in the footage that the customer rammed the staff with his shopping cart. The customer then retreated and left the situation, but the employee wiggled out of someone who was trying to hold him back and ran to the customer to attack him. As a result of the attack, the customer slumped on the floor. The question now is: Was this store employee confrontation an act of self-defense? Well, according to UgoLord the lawyer, there is a fine line between self-defense and retaliation, and even if it is a case of standing your ground, it still does not allow you to retaliate against the person who attacked you. So in the eyes of the law, it would make both men guilty of battery. He said if the employee had retaliated right away, it would have been self-defense because the customer’s actions could have caused physical harm to him. However, since the customer retreated and left the scene, the employee was no longer continuously in danger of being hurt. So he was not supposed to attack the customer again in a store employee confrontation.The Law on Self-Defense
In California, the self-defense statutes state that you have the right to defend yourself, a family member, and even another person from an aggressor. You have zero duty to retreat inside or outside your home (castle). No “stand your ground” law has passed legislative enactment in California. To successfully argue self-defense in California, the defendant must prove that:-
- They reasonably believed that they or another person was in imminent danger of being harmed, killed, or suffering great bodily injury
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- They reasonably believed that the imminent use of force was necessary to defend against that danger
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- They only used the right amount of force that was reasonably necessary to defend against the harm
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- The other party was the initial aggressor
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- you made a good-faith effort to stop fighting and indicated this to the other person, or
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- you initially attacked with non-deadly force, and the other person responded with deadly force.
Battery, Penal Code 242 PC
The battery is the unlawful touching of another person. California’s self-defense laws allow you to act in self-defense if you believe you are in imminent danger, even if you do not fear imminent bodily harm. Per California law, a prosecutor must prove the following to convict a person of simple battery:-
- The defendant willfully and unlawfully touched someone in a harmful or offensive manner, and
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- The defendant did not act in self-defense or defense of someone else