Gov. Code, § 11440.45 · Article 9. General Procedural Provisions
Gov. Code, § 11440.45
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) In any proceedings pursuant to this chapter or Chapter 5 (commencing with Section 11500), 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. 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. 2002, Ch. 92, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2003.
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=GOV§ionNum=11440.45.
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- sha256 20660cf0e955ab1122dc6d8611fadd7e7089fcd317112739962721c1e87b8e05
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- 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
This section cites
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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.