When, through fraud, mistake, or accident, a written contract fails to express the real intention of the parties, such intention is to be regarded, and the erroneous parts of the writing disregarded.
Cal. Civ. Code § 1640
INTERPRETATION OF CONTRACTS
Applied in 23 court decisions — leading case 27 Cal. 4th 516 - Hess v. Ford Motor Co. (2002)
Most recently applied in 61 Cal. 4th 871 - Radin v. Jewish National Fund (July 2015)
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.