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Cal. Evid. Code § 917

General Provisions Relating to Privileges

Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Lopez v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc. (2016)

Most recently applied in Tam v. Qualcomm, Inc. (January 2018)

Amended by Stats. 2016, Ch. 50, Sec. 33

How often courts cite this section

2016201820
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) If a privilege is claimed on the ground that the matter sought to be disclosed is a communication made in confidence in the course of the lawyer-client, lawyer referral service-client, physician-patient, psychotherapist-patient, clergy-penitent, marital or domestic partnership, sexual assault counselor-victim, domestic violence counselor-victim, or human trafficking caseworker-victim relationship, the communication is presumed to have been made in confidence and the opponent of the claim of privilege has the burden of proof to establish that the communication was not confidential.

(b) A communication between persons in a relationship listed in subdivision (a) does not lose its privileged character for the sole reason that it is communicated by electronic means or because persons involved in the delivery, facilitation, or storage of electronic communication may have access to the content of the communication.

(c) For purposes of this section, “electronic” has the same meaning provided in Section 1633.2 of the Civil Code.

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