Finding fault in criminal law involves the important determination that an accused is "guilty beyond reasonable doubt".

The standard required in a civil suit is significantly different. In a lawsuit, the evidence on all sides of a dispute must be weighed and liability then must be established on the "balance of probabilities".

If the weight of evidence is found to favour one or more of the parties over the others involved, then money is awarded to the party whose case is preferred, based on the evidence and the law.

Found guilty of a criminal offence, an accused person might afterwards be found not liable for civil damages, or more commonly, as was the case for OJ Simpson, a defendant might be found not guilty in the criminal trial, but subsequently obliged to pay damages in the civil proceedings.

This apparent contradiction results in part from the differing standards of evidence between civil and criminal law. Beyond this dichotomy, however, the distinction between punishment for criminal acts, and compensation for damages caused by a civil tort, is neither an artificial one, nor is it caused solely by the differing onuses of proof.

A judge sitting in a civil trial, while weighing the conduct and credibility of the parties in a lawsuit, is bound above all to focus his deliberations much more subjectively than would a judge at a criminal proceeding. The civil judge after applying the principles of established law, is required to resolve, on a case by case basis, if one or more of the parties to a lawsuit ought properly be ordered to pay any other party, or parties, to the claim, money in damages as a remedy for a loss suffered, based on the unique set of facts presented at that one hearing.

But civil litigation has become so expensive and time consuming that both the criminal side of court, and the legislatures, are increasingly called upon to provide compensation for damages, as a result of the apparent relative inaccessibility of civil courts to victims of a civil loss.

Through civil compensation orders under the Criminal Code, through administrative awards of no-fault benefits in motor vehicle accidents, through Criminal Injuries Compensation awards, and though other means outside the civil courts, victims may now bypass a lawsuit in order to obtain damages directly from criminal courts or directly from government-administered programs, whether their loss is by injury, from mischief to property or even by a loss of income, or other economic losses.

Formerly able to concentrate only on the objective administration of criminal justice, criminal court judges are also watching their mandate expand to incorporate measures which personalize punishment , by ordering penalties to be geared in some part to acknowledge and to address victim’s needs. This is partly a consequence of the failure of the civil side of law to continue to meet the board needs of society. The former ideal of criminal law, to objectively punish and to deter crime, will necessarily also be altered by this very individual and subjective consideration of victims’ losses.