You can sue other people in civil court for whichever tort you feel like they imposed on you. Your neighbor's BBQ burns down your fence, your employer fires you after you refused to suck his dick, or maybe fireworks made you drop a keg of beer on your foot. Whatever, barely matters. What matters is that you want money.

So you sue. In court, you have to demonstrate the tort done to you, the loss of money incurred, and then ask the job for reparation. The defendant will make his case against yours. If the judge deems that the defendant is over 50% likely to be responsible, he'll order him to pay a certain amount of what you asked for. Could be more, could be less, it's really up to the judge and up to how believable your sap story was compared to his.

The murdered lady's family was butthurt over OJ being criminally cleared of the murder, so they sued him for it. The judge agreed with them. OJ was made to pay out the ass, leading to life-long monetary problems. To smear him further, the family offered OJ money for him to write a book about what he would have done had he done the murder, but then changed the book's cover so that it read like an admission of guilt.