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Veh. Code, § 40520 · Article 2. Release Upon Promise to Appear

Veh. Code, § 40520

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) A notice to appear issued pursuant to Section 40518 for an alleged violation recorded by an automatic enforcement system shall contain, or be accompanied by, an affidavit of nonliability and information as to what constitutes nonliability, information as to the effect of executing the affidavit, and instructions for returning the affidavit to the issuing agency.

(b) (1) If a notice to appear is sent to a car rental or leasing company, as the registered owner of the vehicle, the company may return the notice of nonliability pursuant to paragraph (2), if the violation occurred when the vehicle was either leased or rented and operated by a person other than an employee of the rental or leasing company.

(2) If the affidavit of nonliability is returned to the issuing agency by the registered owner within 30 days of the mailing of the notice to appear together with the proof of a written rental agreement or lease between a bona fide renting or leasing company and its customer and that agreement identifies the renter or lessee and provides the driver’s license number, name, and address of the renter or lessee, the agency shall cancel the notice for the registered owner to appear and shall, instead, issue a notice to appear to the renter or lessee identified in the affidavit of nonliability.

(c) Nothing in this section precludes an issuing agency from establishing a procedure whereby registered owners, other than bona fide renting and leasing companies, may execute an affidavit of nonliability if the registered owner identifies the person who was the driver of the vehicle at the time of the alleged violation and whereby the issuing agency issues a notice to appear to that person.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Added by Stats. 1998, Ch. 828, Sec. 26. Effective January 1, 1999.

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=VEH&sectionNum=40520.
Text hash
sha256 985bc967c031d99b2d393d21cabeadca09972870c41b1c9dd5e745327b5fbbb4
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

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