Cal. Gov. Code § 855.8

Medical, Hospital and Public Health Activities

Known as the Government Claims Act

The act spans §§ 810–998 (301 sections).

Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case 62 Cal. 2d 839 - County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (1965)

Most recently applied in Horton v. City of Santa Maria (February 2019)

Added by Stats. 1963, Ch. 1681.

How often courts cite this section

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) Neither a public entity nor a public employee acting within the scope of his employment is liable for injury resulting from diagnosing or failing to diagnose that a person is afflicted with mental illness or addiction or from failing to prescribe for mental illness or addiction.

(b) A public employee acting within the scope of his employment is not liable for administering with due care the treatment prescribed for mental illness or addiction.

(c) Nothing in this section exonerates a public employee who has undertaken to prescribe for mental illness or addiction from liability for injury proximately caused by his negligence or by his wrongful act in so prescribing.

(d) Nothing in this section exonerates a public employee from liability for injury proximately caused by his negligent or wrongful act or omission in administering any treatment prescribed for mental illness or addiction.

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