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Cal. Civ. Code § 3334

Damages for Wrongs

Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case 14 Cal. App. 4th 1770 - Cassinos v. Union Oil Co. (1993)

Most recently applied in 159 F. Supp. 3d 1182 - California v. Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. (February 2016)

Amended by Stats. 1992, Ch. 469, Sec. 1

How often courts cite this section

199320002010201620
citing decisions per year

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.

(a) The detriment caused by the wrongful occupation of real property, in cases not embraced in Section 3335 of this code, the Eminent Domain Law (Title 7 (commencing with Section 1230.010) of Part 3 of the Code of Civil Procedure), or Section 1174 of the Code of Civil Procedure, is deemed to include the value of the use of the property for the time of that wrongful occupation, not exceeding five years next preceding the commencement of the action or proceeding to enforce the right to damages, the reasonable cost of repair or restoration of the property to its original condition, and the costs, if any, of recovering the possession.

(b) (1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), for purposes of subdivision (a), the value of the use of the property shall be the greater of the reasonable rental value of that property or the benefits obtained by the person wrongfully occupying the property by reason of that wrongful occupation.

(2) If a wrongful occupation of real property subject to this section is the result of a mistake of fact of the wrongful occupier, the value of the use of the property, for purposes of subdivision (a), shall be the reasonable rental value of the property.

Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.