The Civil Code of California is a collection of statutes for the State of California . The code is made up of statutes which govern the general obligations and rights of persons within the jurisdiction of California. It was based on a civil code originally prepared by David Dudley Field II in 1865 for the state of New York (but which was never enacted in that state). It is one of the 29 California Codes and was among the first four enacted in 1872.
27-397: The California Consumers Legal Remedies Act ("CLRA") is the name for California Civil Code §§ 1750 et seq. The CLRA declares unlawful several "methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices undertaken by any person in a transaction intended to result or which results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer ". Forbidden practices include misrepresenting
54-538: A coherent civil code , but Field's proposed civil code was not actually enacted until 1866 in Dakota Territory, was belatedly enacted in 1872 in California, and was repeatedly rejected several times by his home state of New York and never enacted in that state. Unlike Field's largely race-neutral code, the original Georgia Code was strongly biased in favor of slavery and white supremacy, and even contained
81-619: A presumption that blacks were prima facie slaves until proven otherwise. Georgia ultimately kept the Code after the Civil War but revised it in 1867 and many more times since, to purge the racism and pro-slavery bias inherent in the original text. A long-standing item in the code was the " citizens' arrest law", which was added to the code in 1863 and remained unchanged until 2021 when the Georgia General Assembly curtailed
108-570: A prevailing defendant usually may not recover their attorney's fees. This legislation article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . California Civil Code The Field civil code was "thoroughly civilian in its approach and arrangement". Like the French Civil Code of 1804 and the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825, it featured the "standard tripartite Gaius system". The code also followed
135-399: A result of a practice declared unlawful by § 1770 to obtain actual damages (the total award of damages in a class action shall be more than $ 1,000); an order enjoining the methods, acts, or practices; restitution of property; punitive damages ; court costs and attorney's fees; and any other relief that the court deems proper. A prevailing plaintiff gets to recover their attorney's fees, but
162-759: The Maryland Campaign . He was promoted to brigadier general on November 1, 1862, but this promotion was not confirmed by the Confederate Congress . At the Battle of Fredericksburg , he was mortally wounded in the thigh by a Union artillery shell that burst inside the Stephens house near the Sunken Road on Marye's Heights. He bled to death from damage to his femoral artery on December 13, 1862. Some later accounts by veterans claim that
189-673: The California Civil Code for its own legal system. Justice Stephen Field (who was David Field's brother and was largely responsible for introducing his work to California), praised the California Codes (including the Civil Code) as "perfect in their analysis, admirable in their arrangement, and furnishing a complete code of laws", while English jurist Sir Frederick Pollock attacked the Civil Code as "about
216-504: The California Civil Code was actually the third successfully enacted codification of the substance of the common law. The first was the Code of Georgia of 1861 (largely based on the work of Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb independent of Field), which is the ancestor of today's Official Code of Georgia Annotated . Then Dakota Territory beat California to the punch by becoming the first jurisdiction to enact Field's civil code in 1866. David Dudley Field II's audacity in trying to codify all of
243-603: The Civil Code (at the suggestion of the California Law Revision Commission ) and re-enacted in the form of a new Family Code. The California Family Code went into effect on January 1, 1994. Most statutes that deal with civil procedure are codified in a separate code, the California Code of Civil Procedure . Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb (April 10, 1823 – December 13, 1862), also known as T. R. R. Cobb ,
270-558: The Civil Code contains a definition of consideration , a principle in the common law of contracts which has no direct equivalent in civil law systems. Similarly, it codifies the mailbox rule that communication of acceptance is effective when dropped in the mail, which is a feature unique to the common law. The Code was first adopted in 1872 by the California State Legislature and was signed into law by then Governor Newton Booth . The Code enacted in 1872
297-579: The Georgia Code of 1861, which was the first successfully enacted attempt at a comprehensive codification of the common law anywhere in the United States. It is the ancestor of today's Official Code of Georgia Annotated . Simultaneously, the Northern law reformer David Dudley Field II was independently working in the same ambitious direction of trying to codify all of the common law into
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#1732780938058324-455: The Law were developed in the 20th century as a compromise between those who felt the common law was a disorganized mess and those who valued the flexibility and richness of the common law. Only California, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana enacted virtually all of Field's civil code, while Idaho partially enacted the contract sections but omitted the tort sections. Later, Guam borrowed much of
351-417: The Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America (1858), a passage of which reads: [T]his inquiry into the physical, mental, and moral development of the negro race seems to point them clearly, as peculiarly fitted for a laborious class. The physical frame is capable of great and long-continued exertion. Their mental capacity renders them incapable of successful self-development, and yet adapts them for
378-517: The civilian tradition of systematically classifying subject matter into "categories of decreasing generality, constantly proceeding from the general to the specific". However, as completed in 1865, the substance of the Field civil code was "overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, that of the common and statutory law of New York in the 1860s". In that aspect, it was "by no means revolutionary but rather conservative". For example, as enacted in California,
405-515: The direction of the wiser race. Their moral character renders them happy, peaceful, contented and cheerful in a status that would break the spirit and destroy the energies of the Caucasian or the native American. Cobb's Inquiry represented the capstone of proslavery legal thought and has been called one of the most comprehensive American proslavery treatise. It drew together examples from world history of slavery, which he used to argue that slavery
432-462: The general principles of the common law (including the law of property, domestic relations, contracts, and torts) into general statutory law in the form of a civil code was extremely controversial in the American legal community, both in his time and ever since. Most U.S. states (as well as most other common law jurisdictions) declined to pursue such an aggressive codification. The Restatements of
459-677: The law Cobb served in the Confederate Congress , where for a time he was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. He was also on the committee that was responsible for the drafting of the Confederate constitution. Cobb organized Cobb's Legion in the late summer of 1861 and was commissioned a colonel in the Confederate army on August 28, 1861. The Legion was assigned to the Army of Northern Virginia . It took heavy losses during
486-466: The legislature adopted the board's proposed amendments to the Code. The Civil Code is divided – like its civil law analogues – into four divisions: "the first relating to persons"; "the second to property"; "the third to obligations"; "the fourth contains general provisions relating to the three preceding divisions." Division One contains laws which govern personal rights while Division Two contains laws which govern property rights. Division Three codifies
513-428: The source of the good and services, representing reconditioned goods as new, advertising goods without having the expected demand in stock, representing a repair is needed when it is not, representing rebates that have hidden conditions, and misrepresenting the authority of a salesman to close a deal. The CLRA claim is attractive to potential plaintiffs because Cal. Civ. Code § 1780 allows consumers who suffer damage as
540-482: The substantive contract law of the State of California as well as various regulations relating to agency, mortgages, unsecured loans, extensions of credit, and other areas of California law. Division Four defines remedies available in lawsuits, what constitutes a nuisance, various maxims of jurisprudence, and other miscellaneous provisions which relate "to the three preceding divisions." Although revolutionary for its time,
567-545: The worst piece of codification ever produced" and called it "the New York abortion" (since it was never enacted in that state). Over the years, the Civil Code has been repeatedly amended by legislation and initiative measures. A very significant change to the Civil Code occurred in June 1992 when nearly all of the Civil Code's provisions relating to marriage , community property , and other family law matters were removed from
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#1732780938058594-693: The wounding was by rifle fire and that a Confederate soldier may have been responsible. He is buried at Oconee Hill Cemetery in Athens, Georgia . The T. R. R. Cobb House , where Thomas Cobb and his wife Marion lived in Athens is now a museum. Originally constructed across Prince Avenue from its current location, it was moved to Stone Mountain Park in Stone Mountain, Georgia, where it was partially reassembled about 1990. Stone Mountain Park had hoped to restore
621-625: Was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society . He was admitted to the bar in 1842. He married Marion Lumpkin, daughter of the Supreme Court of Georgia Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin . Only three of their children lived past childhood: Callender (Callie), who married Augustus Longstreet Hull; Sarah A. (Sally), who married Henry Jackson, the son of Henry Rootes Jackson ; and Marion (Birdie), who married Michael Hoke Smith . The Lucy Cobb Institute , which he founded,
648-650: Was an American lawyer, author, politician, and Confederate States Army officer, killed in the Battle of Fredericksburg during the American Civil War . He was the brother of noted Confederate statesman Howell Cobb . Cobb was born in 1823 in Jefferson County , Georgia , to John A. Cobb and Sarah (Rootes) Cobb. He was the younger brother of Howell Cobb . Cobb graduated in 1841 from Franklin College (present-day University of Georgia ), where he
675-468: Was close to ubiquitous in human history and thus natural. He also drew on evidence of slavery's economic necessity and on then popular ideas of "science," which supported white supremacy and slavery. Cobb was also one of the founders of the University of Georgia School of Law , and served on the first Georgia code commission of 1858 and drafted what became the private, penal, and civil law portions of
702-400: Was essentially the Field civil code of 1865, "with some changes to adapt it to previous California legislation". It was soon discovered that many more provisions of the new Civil Code conflicted with existing California statutes and case law. In 1873, Stephen J. Field , Jackson Temple , and John W. Dwinelle were appointed to a Board of Code Examiners to investigate such issues. In 1874,
729-474: Was named for a daughter who died shortly before the school opened. His niece Mildred Lewis Rutherford served the school for over forty years in various capacities. From 1849 to 1857, he was a reporter of the Supreme Court of Georgia . He was an ardent secessionist , and was a delegate to the Secession Convention. He is best known for his treatise on the law of slavery titled An Inquiry into
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