If the terms of a promise are in any respect ambiguous or uncertain, it must be interpreted in the sense in which the promisor believed, at the time of making it, that the promisee understood it.
Cal. Civ. Code § 1649
INTERPRETATION OF CONTRACTS
Applied in 91 court decisions — leading case 51 Cal. 3d 807 - AIU Insurance v. Superior Court (1990)
Most recently applied in 243 Cal. Rptr. 3d 183 - Linton v. Cnty. of Contra Costa (January 2019)
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.