Neither specific nor preventive relief can be granted to enforce a penalty or forfeiture in any case, nor to enforce a penal law, except in a case of nuisance or as otherwise provided by law.
Cal. Civ. Code § 3369
General Principles
Applied in 56 court decisions — leading case 20 Cal. 4th 163 - Cel-Tech Communications, Inc. v. Los Angeles Cellular Telephone Co. (1999)
Most recently applied in 2 Cal. 5th 1121 - Leider v. Lewis (May 2017)
Amended by Stats. 1977, Ch. 299.
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.