Where all the parties who unite in a promise receive some benefit from the consideration, whether past or present, their promise is presumed to be joint and several.
Cal. Civ. Code § 1659
INTERPRETATION OF CONTRACTS
Applied in 11 court decisions — leading case 9 Cal. App. 2d 665 - Dabney v. Dabney (1935)
Most recently applied in Diamond National Corp. v. Golden Empire Builders, Inc. (February 1963)
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.