For wrongful injuries to animals being subjects of property, committed willfully or by gross negligence, in disregard of humanity, exemplary damages may be given.
Cal. Civ. Code § 3340
Damages for Wrongs
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Plotnik v. Meihaus (2012)
Most recently applied in Carla Strickland v. Kathryn and Jeremy Medlen (April 2013)
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.