Not in Florida. A win in the criminal case insulates one from a civil case.
Misleading.
Florida statute
776.032 bestows criminal and civil immunity
only if a court rules that a defendant's use of force was justified.
Counterexample: someone who is lucky enough to skate merely because of
jury nullification or just plain old innocence doesn't get
insulation.
Implication: if the case goes to the jury, the defendant can be sued.
Proof: Z-man's lawyers ultimately didn't request a pre-trial self-defense hearing.
During the trial they didn't obviously ask the judge for a self-defense ruling.
Regardless of whether they asked for a ruling, they didn't get one:
the case went to the jury, which found Zimmerman not guilty.
After the trial, Z's lawyer said...
Trial of George Zimmerman: Public Response
...
Zimmerman's attorney Mark O'Mara said that if anyone tries to sue Zimmerman, "we will seek and we will get civil immunity in a civil hearing, and we will see just how many civil lawsuits have spawned from this fiasco".
...
FWIW, USA Today (like other media sources) wrote:
Note well: that's the
lede.
=====
It's nice that Florida law provides a pathway for keeping lawsuits at bay,
but it makes sense that a vanilla criminal trial verdict of not guilty wouldn't suffice.
After all, it's easier for a plaintiff to establish that a preponderance of the evidence
agrees with their case than it is for a prosecutor to establish that
there is no reasonable doubt that their case is correct.
Just ask OJ.