Veh. Code, § 5602 · Article 1. Procedure to Transfer
Veh. Code, § 5602
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
An owner who has made a bona fide sale or transfer of a vehicle and has delivered possession of the vehicle to a purchaser is not, by reason of any of the provisions of this code, the owner of the vehicle so as to be subject to civil liability or criminal liability for the parking, abandoning, or operation of the vehicle thereafter by another when the selling or transferring owner, in addition to that delivery and that bona fide sale or transfer, has fulfilled either of the following requirements:
(a) He or she has made proper endorsement and delivery of the certificate of ownership as provided in this code.
(b) He or she has delivered to the department or has placed in the United States mail, addressed to the department, either of the following documents:
(1) The notice as provided in subdivision (b) of Section 4456 or Section 5900 or 5901.
(2) The appropriate documents and fees for registration of the vehicle to the new owner pursuant to the sale or transfer.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 1994, Ch. 180, Sec. 6. Effective July 11, 1994.
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§ionNum=5602.
- Text hash
- sha256 a2203a61959c0442169dc4cfe2977f4637b6d0a7a61b5caf81d1e2e13b3a404a
- 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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