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Interestingly enough, I think the same doctrine would apply to both the criminal and the civil case against you. IANAL but I understand that one of the basic principles of liability is whether or not the result is foreseeable. If you do anything reckless while defending yourself, and hit an innocent third party, Section 9.05 of the Penal Code says you can be prosecuted. The act is reckless if there is a chance of the result that you were aware of or should have been aware of. That last part means the result was foreseeable.

In civil cases, I think you are only responsible for the actions that were foreseeable. So, a store is not responsible for a customer getting shot by a small kid who plays with a gun he found in the bathroom because this is not a reasonably foreseeable event. But since stores are robbed on a fairly regular basis, they could be held responsible for a customer getting shot by a robber if they did nothing to reduce the chance of robberies occurring.

To apply this to a shooting, if you were to shoot a criminal attempting to rob you, and it is in the middle of a crowd (say an audience at a concert in the park) that is packed front to back, and the bullet goes completely through the criminal and hits the person behind him, you might be both civilly and criminally liable for the third person. I would think that shooting in that crowded a situation could be called reckless.

I could be wrong on all this and you might be good to go, as said in the article referenced in the original post.