Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

Cal. Evid. Code § 1416

Means of Authenticating and Proving Writings

Applied in 6 court decisions — leading case 39 Cal. 3d 707 - People v. Maki (1985)

Most recently applied in 60 Cal. 4th 153 - People v. Lucas (August 2014)

Enacted by Stats. 1965, Ch. 299.

How often courts cite this section

19751980199020002010201410
citing decisions per year

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.

A witness who is not otherwise qualified to testify as an expert may state his opinion whether a writing is in the handwriting of a supposed writer if the court finds that he has personal knowledge of the handwriting of the supposed writer. Such personal knowlegde may be acquired from:

(a) Having seen the supposed writer write;

(b) Having seen a writing purporting to be in the handwriting of the supposed writer and upon which the supposed writer has acted or been charged;

(c) Having received letters in the due course of mail purporting to be from the supposed writer in response to letters duly addressed and mailed by him to the supposed writer; or

(d) Any other means of obtaining personal knowledge of the handwriting of the supposed writer.

Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.