All contracts, whether public or private, are to be interpreted by the same rules, except as otherwise provided by this Code.
Cal. Civ. Code § 1635
INTERPRETATION OF CONTRACTS
Applied in 34 court decisions — leading case 5 Cal. 4th 854 - Bay Cities Paving & Grading, Inc. v. Lawyers' Mutual Insurance (1993)
Most recently applied in 241 Cal. Rptr. 3d 283 - Orange Cove Irrigation Dist. v. L. Molinos Mut. Water Co. (December 2018)
Enacted 1872.
How often courts cite this section
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.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.