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Cal. Penal Code § 637.2

Invasion of Privacy

Applied in 36 court decisions — leading case 39 Cal. 4th 95 - Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc. (2006)

Most recently applied in Brandon Briskin v. Shopify, Inc. (April 2025)

Amended by Stats. 2016, Ch. 855, Sec. 4

How often courts cite this section

197619801990200020102020202540
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) Any person who has been injured by a violation of this chapter may bring an action against the person who committed the violation for the greater of the following amounts:

(1) Five thousand dollars ($5,000) per violation.

(2) Three times the amount of actual damages, if any, sustained by the plaintiff.

(b) Any person may, in accordance with Chapter 3 (commencing with Section 525) of Title 7 of Part 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, bring an action to enjoin and restrain any violation of this chapter, and may in the same action seek damages as provided by subdivision (a).

(c) It is not a necessary prerequisite to an action pursuant to this section that the plaintiff has suffered, or be threatened with, actual damages.

(d) This section shall not be construed to affect Title 4 (commencing with Section 3425.1) of Part 1 of Division 4 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.