Evid. Code, § 1160 · Chapter 3. Other Evidence Affected or Excluded by Extrinsic Policies
Evid. Code, § 1160
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) The portion of statements, writings, or benevolent gestures expressing sympathy or a general sense of benevolence relating to the pain, suffering, or death of a person involved in an accident and made to that person or to the family of that person shall be inadmissible as evidence of an admission of liability in a civil action. A statement of fault, however, which is part of, or in addition to, any of the above shall not be inadmissible pursuant to this section.
(b) For purposes of this section:
(1) “Accident” means an occurrence resulting in injury or death to one or more persons which is not the result of willful action by a party.
(2) “Benevolent gestures” means actions which convey a sense of compassion or commiseration emanating from humane impulses.
(3) “Family” means the spouse, parent, grandparent, stepmother, stepfather, child, grandchild, brother, sister, half brother, half sister, adopted children of parent, or spouse’s parents of an injured party.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Added by Stats. 2000, Ch. 195, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2001.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=EVID§ionNum=1160.
- Text hash
- sha256 2e9e87ab704dc71e54d79cd9bc65b14b7cc26c846c37c3c01740cdd0da84f9be
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
Cited by 1 provision
Provisions in this library whose text cites Evid. Code, § 1160. Each shows the citation as that text prints it.
Procedural information only. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Confirm the current text with the official publisher before relying on it.