Joint or Several Obligations
Applied in 25 court decisions — leading case 44 Cal. 3d 1188 - Evangelatos v. Superior Court (1988)
Most recently applied in Bigler-Engler v. Breg, Inc. (January 2017)
Amended June 3, 1986, by initiative Proposition 51, Sec. 2
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Joint Liability
An obligation imposed upon several persons, or a right created in favor of several persons, is presumed to be joint, and not several, except as provided in Section 1431.2, and except in the special cases mentioned in the title on the interpretation of contracts. This presumption, in the case of a right, can be overcome only by express words to the contrary.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.