A “legal owner” is a person holding a security interest in a vehicle which is subject to the provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code, or the lessor of a vehicle to the State or to any county, city, district, or political subdivision of the State, or to the United States, under a lease, lease-sale, or rental-purchase agreement which grants possession of the vehicle to the lessee for a period of 30 consecutive days or more.
Cal. Veh. Code § 370
WORDS AND PHRASES DEFINED
Applied in 12 court decisions — leading case 32 Cal. 2d 193 - County of Alameda v. Kuchel (1948)
Most recently applied in Ron Miller Enters., Inc. v. Lobel Fin. Corp. (February 2019)
Amended by Stats. 1963, Ch. 1867.
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.