Oct. 6, 2026
The century-long battle against cappers
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2039, which adds a $25,000-per-violation civil penalty and public prosecutor enforcement to California's decades-old ban on capping, building on last year's SB 37 private right of action, though legal ethics attorneys doubt the changes will make much difference.
California just created new penalties for capping. If the term sounds old-fashioned, that's because it is.
Ambulances were slower and easier to catch in the 1930s. But the rhetoric around capping would not be out of place on a Reddit thread.
In the 1930s, attorneys John E. Biby and James F. Brennan wrote dueling arguments in the State Bar Journal over the "bugaboo of ambulance chasing." Biby thought it was a scourge on the profession; Brennan claimed the iss...
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