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Cal. Evid. Code § 1521

Proof of the Content of a Writing

Applied in 17 court decisions — leading case People v. Hovarter (2008)

Most recently applied in 12 Cal. 5th 367 - People v. Gonzalez (December 2021)

Added by Stats. 1998, Ch. 100, Sec. 2

How often courts cite this section

1999200020102020202130
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) The content of a writing may be proved by otherwise admissible secondary evidence. The court shall exclude secondary evidence of the content of writing if the court determines either of the following:

(1) A genuine dispute exists concerning material terms of the writing and justice requires the exclusion.

(2) Admission of the secondary evidence would be unfair.

(b) Nothing in this section makes admissible oral testimony to prove the content of a writing if the testimony is inadmissible under Section 1523 (oral testimony of the content of a writing).

(c) Nothing in this section excuses compliance with Section 1401 (authentication).

(d) This section shall be known as the “Secondary Evidence Rule.”

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