Every director, officer or agent of any corporation, domestic or foreign, is guilty of a felony (a) who knowingly concurs in making, publishing or posting either generally or privately to the shareholders or other persons (1) any written report, exhibit, statement of its affairs or pecuniary condition or notice containing any material statement which is false, or (2) any untrue or willfully or fraudulently exaggerated report, prospectus, account, statement of operations, values, business, profits, expenditures or prospects, or (3) any other paper or document intended to produce or give, or having a tendency to produce or give, the shares of stock in such corporation a greater value or a less apparent or market value than they really possess, or (b) who refuses to make any book entry or post any notice required by law in the manner required by law.
Cal. Corp. Code § 2254
Crimes and Penalties
Known as the General Corporation Law
The act spans §§ 100–2319 (398 sections).
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case 612 F. Supp. 1316 - Lewis Ex Rel. National Semiconductor Corp. v. Sporck (1985)
Most recently applied in 742 F. Supp. 1043 - Burt on Behalf of McDonnell Douglas v. Danforth (July 1990)
Added by Stats. 1975, Ch. 682.
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.