Psychotherapist-Patient Privilege
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case People v. Castro (1994)
Most recently applied in Elijah W. v. Superior Court (May 2013)
Added by Stats. 1970, Ch. 1397.
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.
There is no privilege under this article if all of the following circumstances exist:
(a) The patient is a child under the age of 16.
(b) The psychotherapist has reasonable cause to believe that the patient has been the victim of a crime and that disclosure of the communication is in the best interest of the child.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.