A public employee is not liable for civil damages on account of personal injury to or death of any person or damage to property resulting from the operation, in the line of duty, of an authorized emergency vehicle while responding to an emergency call or when in the immediate pursuit of an actual or suspected violator of the law, or when responding to but not upon returning from a fire alarm or other emergency call.
Cal. Veh. Code § 17004
Public Agencies
Applied in 11 court decisions — leading case County of Sacramento v. Lewis (1998)
Most recently applied in January Littlejohn v. School Board of Leon County Florida (March 2025)
Amended by Stats. 1965, Ch. 1527.
How often courts cite this section
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.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.