Every person who suffers detriment from the unlawful act or omission of another, may recover from the person in fault a compensation therefor in money, which is called damages.
Cal. Civ. Code § 3281
General Principles
Applied in 55 court decisions — leading case 51 Cal. 3d 807 - AIU Insurance v. Superior Court (1990)
Most recently applied in Raines v. Coastal Pac. Food Distribs., Inc. (May 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.