(a) Authentication of a writing is required before it may be received in evidence.
(b) Authentication of a writing is required before secondary evidence of its content may be received in evidence.
Cal. Evid. Code § 1401
Requirement of Authentication
Applied in 36 court decisions — leading case 1 Cal. 4th 324 - People v. Price (1991)
Most recently applied in 11 Cal. 5th 259 - People v. Wilson (April 2021)
Enacted by Stats. 1965, 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.