The COVID Project
The record
- Jurisdiction
- California
- Level
- State
- Authority
- Evidence Code, Stats. 1967, ch. 650
- Issued
- 2020-11-11 Nov. 11, 2020
- Effective
- standing (read as 2020-11-11)
- End
- standing (read as 2021-09-30)
- In force
- Standing since Nov. 11, 2020 (a statutory duty; in force throughout the six quarters)
- Quarters
- 2020 Q22020 Q32020 Q42021 Q12021 Q22021 Q3
2020 Q22020 Q32020 Q42021 Q12021 Q22021 Q3
- Limitation types
- Standing dutyOther
- Addressees
- persons generally, including employers and owners or persons in control of premises
- Character
- statutory duty
- Collection
- Standing duties: California DUT-CA
Operative words
(a) The failure of a person to exercise due care is presumed if: (1) He violated a statute, ordinance, or regulation of a public entity; (2) The violation proximately caused death or injury to person or property; (3) The death or injury resulted from an occurrence of the nature which the statute, ordinance, or regulation was designed to prevent; and (4)...
Penalty
Civil: presumption of negligence in any action for death or injury (tort exposure to customers, visitors and, as litigated in DUT-CA-019 and DUT-CA-020, employees' household members).
What it required
Made every health order issued under the Emergency Services Act (force of law, Gov. Code section 8567), every Health and Safety Code quarantine and disinfection regulation, every county health ordinance and every Title 8 standard the legal standard of care in California: an employer whose violation of one of them proximately caused a COVID-19 infection is presumed to have failed to exercise due care, rebuttable only by proof that it 'did what might reasonably be expected of a person of ordinary prudence, acting under similar circumstances, who desired to comply with the law' (subdivision (b)(1)). California enacted no liability shield to displace this rule (DUT-CA-017).
Retrieval noteRendered from the Wayback Machine's capture of Nov. 11, 2020 of the official page, so the exhibit shows the text as it stood within the period; the history note '(Added by Stats. 1967, Ch. 650.)' shows no amendment. This is the standard-of-care instrument the task's category 4 asks for in a State without a shield statute: in California the condition that other States wrote into their shields (protection only for a business that complied with the health standards) is the general rule of negligence law, and compliance with the orders and regulations is the only way to avoid the presumption.