The upcoming trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice reveals that collateral damage from Superman’s fight with General Zod in Man of Steel really ticked off Batman, but Superman may have an even bigger problem on his hands: lawsuits. James Daily, co-creator of Law and the Multiverse and co-author of The Law of Superheroes, thinks it would be tough for Superman to defend himself in court, given that he could easily have chosen a less populated venue to confront Zod.

“I don’t recall any particularly good reason why it needed to happen there, and why it couldn’t have happened in, say, Antarctica,” Daily says in Episode 161 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

Of course people have the legal right to defend themselves, but they’re still required to exercise a reasonable level of care when it comes to those caught in the crossfire.

“What you can’t necessarily do is take a machine gun and just spray bullets wildly into a crowd in an effort to strike the person who’s threatening you,” says Daily.

There are a few legal defenses available to Superman, including the sudden peril doctrine (people are held to a lower standard of care in an emergency) and the defense of justification (if Superman hadn’t fought Zod the consequences would have been worse). Brad Desnoyer, an associate teaching professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, suggests that Superman may also be able to shift much of the blame onto General Zod.

“He could say that Zod and the other Kryptonians were contributorily negligent,” says Desnoyer. “And so he’d only be on the hook for part of the damage, and the other part you’d have to get from Zod.”

But Daily thinks that won’t do much to lower Superman’s legal bills.

“Even if you could say that Zod and the rest are seventy-five percent liable,” says Daily, “Superman is twenty-five percent liable for a hundred billion dollars in property damage.”

Listen to our complete interview with James Daily and Brad Desnoyer in Episode 161 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

James Daily on the origin of Law and the Multiverse:

“At some point during the dinner conversation, the subject turned to Superman—as these things so often do—and the observation was made that if everybody on Krypton had X-ray vision, then either they would all line their walls with lead, or they’d have to have very different privacy laws. And a friend of mine suggested I should write a blog about that kind of stuff, and that he would read it, and that would be at least one person. And I should make a footnote here to all the listeners that I am fully aware that the majority—if not all—Kryptonians on Krypton, orbiting its red sun, do not have superpowers, and so that is a sort of hypothetical hypothetical. I have to make that note because I’ve told this origin story a few times, and whenever I fail to mention that fact, I tend to get some mail about it, some angry comments. So no, I’m aware that Superman’s powers come from earth’s yellow sun.”

James Daily on The Law of Superheroes:

“It’s a little hard to estimate the total number of comic books that have ever been written, but it’s well above 100,000 distinct comic book stories that have been written over the many decades. So comic books are this rich medium with a tremendous number of stories covering almost every aspect of life, and as a result interacting with—either explicitly or implicitly—every aspect of the law. … We didn’t have to invent a lot of facts or invent a lot of law, we could really just take these rich, detailed stories that we know so well, and in that way we hoped to really de-mystify the law and show that it’s not this impossibly arcane, difficult thing to understand, that for the most part legal concepts are pretty straightforward and pretty—if not simple, at least there is a logic to them.”

Brad Desnoyer on Batman:

“If [Batman] is acting for the government, then all the restrictions the government has on its own power have to apply to him, things like: how he’s interrogating, how he’s breaking into people’s houses, how he’s not reading anyone their Miranda rights. But at the same time what he’s actually doing is he’s really working for the Gotham City police department. I mean, they’re shooting a signal into the sky saying ‘help us,’ and then having him do all the stuff for them that they’re not allowed to do, and then they reap the benefits. And that’s something that really wouldn’t work in the real world. And the other thing that James writes about, which is great, is testifying in costume. You’re going to need Batman to show up in costume and testify, and you really can’t have someone testify in costume under the Confrontation Clause in the Sixth Amendment.”

James Daily on Marvel and DC’s “superhero” trademark:

“I think it’s ridiculous. There are virtually no trademarks that are co-owned by competitors in a market, especially when they don’t make the same thing. … Just go into a comic book convention some time and try to argue that Marvel and DC make virtually identical comic books, and see if you make it out alive. … Another reason why I think it’s ridiculous is that those words have just lost all meaning in terms of, if you ask somebody, ‘Hey, what is a superhero?’ ‘Oh, a superhero is the protagonist in a Marvel or DC comic book, and nothing else.’ Nobody thinks that. … The term is totally generic, in my opinion, and the idea that it or ‘supervillain’ for that matter are meaningful trademarks is ridiculous.”