California Court Of Appeal Charts Middle Course On Meaning Of 'Great Bodily Injury,' Effectively Limiting Scope Of Disclosable Police Records

IN A FIRST-ON-THE-ISSUE APPELLATE DECISION, FOR THE LONG-RUNNING DEBATE ON WHAT “GREAT BODILY INJURY” (G.B.I.) MEANS WHEN IT COMES TO CALIFORNIA PUBLIC RECORDS ACT (C.P.R.A.) DISCLOSURE OF POLICE USE OF FORCE INVESTIGATORY RECORDS, THE COURT OF APPEAL CHARTS A MUDDLED MIDDLE COURSE THAT EFFECTIVELY LIMITS THE SCOPE OF DISCLOSABLE POLICE RECORDS

Overview & Summary

In a pyrrhic victory for the ACLU, on March 23, 2026, in City of Fresno v. Superior Court ¹, a case interpreting the California Public Records Act (CPRA) and its 2019 exceptions to the law enforcement investigatory records and police officer personnel file records/information exemptions from disclosure, making records of police use of force disclosable where the force causes death or “great bodily injury” (“GBI”), the Fifth Appellate District adopted a surprisingly subtle opinion that may prevent the ACLU from achieving by litigation what they were unable to achieve by legislation.

Specifically, after rejecting the government’s arguments that CPRA GBI should be defined as the term is used in police use of force case law (namely, as the kind of life-threatening or permanently disabling injury that can justify a police officer’s use of deadly force), the Court of Appeal adopted the Penal Code definition of GBI proposed by the ACLU. However, in doing so, the Court of Appeal also rejected the notion that, consistent with older case law, Penal Code GBI extended as low as mere physical pain ²: a definition that would have opened the floodgates of CPRA disclosures in such a way as to make records of virtually all police uses of force disclosable – and burying already overburdened police agencies statewide in CPRA requests.

Instead, the Court of Appeal held that CPRA GBI does not extend to physical pain or “minor or moderate” injuries. In defining what Penal Code GBI is, the Court of Appeal also adopted the Penal Code definition of serious bodily injury (“SBI”) as a benchmark (“serious impairment of physical condition, including, but not limited to, the following: loss of consciousness; concussion; bone fracture; protracted loss or impairment of function of any bodily member or organ; a wound requiring extensive suturing; and serious disfigurement”), while also noting that some force-caused injuries could constitute SBI without constituting GBI. 

The Court of Appeal also cited the facts of several Penal Code GBI cases to illustrate what kinds of injuries qualify. Although the Court never expressly stated such a rule, its coupling of Penal Code GBI to Penal Code SBI, and its GBI case examples, all suggest that CPRA GBI fall into roughly three categories of injuries that can make records of police use of force disclosable:

(1) life-threatening injuries (like a gunshot wound) that causes some impairment in mobility; 

(2) injuries so severe that they result in widespread superficial injuries (like bruises, scrapes, etc.) plus some impairment of mobility; and 

(3) injuries that require stitches or hospitalization (e.g., an overnight stay).

By way of contrast, the Court approved cases finding that injuries like bone fractures, knife wounds, and lacerations that did not require hospitalization were also not GBI; and the Court accepted as consistent with its GBI ruling certain trial court findings that the abrasions, punctures, burns, and fall-related contusions caused by TASERs are not GBI.

As a result, the flood of CPRA disclosures that ACLU sought is now unlikely to materialize, while the government who was not deemed the prevailing party may have won a significant victory in the war over the scope of disclosures allowed under the GBI exception. 

For an extended analysis, with citations, please see below. 

Background: The Debate Between Narrow GBI and Broad GBI

Beginning in 2019, through revisions to the California Public Records Act (CPRA) ³ by a pair of reform bills, SB 1421 and AB 748, California created a number of narrow exceptions to the otherwise broad exemptions from public records disclosure that applied to law enforcement investigatory records ⁴ and police officer personnel file records ⁵ or information. 

One of 2019’s most controversial CPRA revisions was the new exception that would allow for police investigatory records or police personnel records to be disclosable if they pertained to an “incident involving the use of force against a person by a peace officer or custodial officer that resulted in death or in great bodily injury [“GBI”]….” ⁶

Broad (Penal Code) GBI. The proponents of a broad construction of GBI (including the ACLU) argued that the GBI term is defined by California statute, specifically California Penal Code section 12022.7(f) (a sentencing enhancement statute), as “a significant or substantial physical injury.” ⁷ However, the broad GBI proponents immediately pointed to criminal case law defining that GBI term in such a way that GBI was found even when the injuries were only abrasions/scrapes, contusions/bruises, punctures, lacerations, or just physical pain. ⁸ Broad GBI would thus have the effect of making disclosable all records of essentially all uses of physical force by police: logarithmically expanding the public disclosure burdens upon police agencies. 

Narrow (Use-of-Force Law) GBI. Citing to canons of statutory construction and the legislative history of SB 1421, proponents of a narrow construction of GBI (including the petitioner City and amici curiae like the California Sheriffs Association and the League of California Cities) argued that the GBI term should be construed how that term is defined in the context of police use of force law. Thus, under a police-use-of-force construction, the term GBI refers to the kind of life-threatening or permanently disabling injuries that, when faced with the immediate threat thereof, can justify an officer using deadly force. Narrow GBI would thus have the effect of making disclosable only those police records pertaining to limited police uses of force that caused injuries involving “a substantial risk of death, unconsciousness, protracted and obvious disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member or organ.” ⁹

Questionable Rulings & Flawed Rationale in the Decision

While the City of Fresno opinion appears to have two silver linings (discussed more extensively in the below section), there are several noticeable flaws in its rationale and holding which, even though the California Supreme Court failed to review that appellate case on the merits ¹⁰, undermine its likelihood to long withstand further appeals. 

First, the Court of Appeal failed to apply a proper plain text reading to the statute at issue. When a term is not defined in a statute, that term is defined according to its ordinary dictionary definition. ¹¹ GBI is not defined in the CPRA revision statutes at all. Moreover, Penal Code section 12022.7’s GBI appears to limit its meaning only to the sentencing enhancement statute at issue – it does not purport to apply itself more broadly: “As used in this section, ‘great bodily injury’ means a significant or substantial physical injury.” ¹² Thus, the dictionary definition of GBI (which is narrow) – namely, a “physical injury suffered by the victim of a violent crime that causes a substantial risk of death, extended loss or impairment of a body part or function, or permanent disfigurement” ¹³ – should have applied, not the Penal Code sentencing enhancement definition. 

Second, by presuming that the Legislature meant for the CPRA’s GBI to be the sentencing enhancement’s broader GBI, the Court of Appeal ignored the legislative history showing that in every successive round of amendments to SB 1421, the Legislature removed whole categories of police uses of force from the proposed exception mandating disclosure. ¹⁴ In doing so, the legislative committee explained that the amendments’ reduced scope of the proposed exception was to limit disclosure only to the “’most serious’ uses of force” in “very limited cases.” ¹⁵ Thus, since the Penal Code (pre-Cabrera) case law defining GBI all the way down to mere pain ¹⁶ would make virtually all police uses of force disclosable (not just in “very limited cases” regarding the “most serious” use of force complaints), and since such a broad construction of GBI was contrary to the apparent legislative intent, such a broad construction of GBI cannot be correct. 

Third, by applying a definition of GBI from sentencing enhancement law, instead of how that GBI term is defined in police use of force case law, the Court of Appeal’s apples-to-oranges analysis would require absurd results: such as deadly force being justified under federal law merely when an officer faces an immediate threat of extensive bruising or physical pain. ¹⁷

Fourth, the Court of Appeal arguably failed to recognize the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling from In re Cabrera. In Cabrera, the California Supreme Court affirmed a prior decision holding that there could be some injuries that satisfied the definition of SBI without rising to the level of GBI: in other words, not all SBI were automatically GBI. ¹⁸

However, the Court of Appeal failed to recognize what that means in the context of the scope of SBI versus the scope of GBI. SBI has a clear statutory definition ¹⁹: if an injury does not satisfy those conditions, it cannot be an SBI. But Cabrera also holds that there may be some injuries that qualify as SBI without being GBI: because its whole holding was that even though the jury had found SBI, that did not automatically mean they had found GBI ²⁰. Thus, Cabrera can only be construed to mean that there are injuries that are not “significant or substantial” even if those injuries involve “a bodily injury that involves a substantial risk of death, unconsciousness, protracted and obvious disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member or organ.” 

In other words, since it would be absurd to construe Cabrera to mean that GBI are lesser injuries than SBI, one can only logically construe that GBI must be greater injuries than SBI. ²¹ This, in turn means that, since Cabrera in 2023, an injury must at least be an SBI to be a GBI. ²²

However, in refusing to accept the City petitioner’s arguments for a narrow GBI based on the Government Code and police use-of-force case law’s construction of the term, in a manner consistent with what some trial courts have done ²³, the Court of Appeal still seems to have rejected ACLU’s overly broad GBI in favor of a narrowed version of Penal Code GBI. 

Fifth, the Court of Appeal’s sometimes self-contradictory opinion verges on defining GBI in the eye of the beholder, without clear benchmarks as to what GBI is – as opposed to a definition of GBI akin to that of SBI, where clear categories of specific physical injuries are listed to define the standard – even though the Court offers some fact-specific case exemplars that may provide slightly more concrete guidance. 

Key Takeaways: The Court of Appeal’s Muddled Definition of “Great Bodily Injury”

To elaborate on the summary analysis above, while embracing the Penal Code GBI as the definition of CPRA GBI (and while brushing aside and critiquing the police defendants’ concerns about an overbroad definition of GBI), without expressly stating such, the Court of Appeal distinguished GBI from “moderate or minor injury” ²⁴: and, in so doing, particularly by way of its examples of GBI, the Court of Appeal effectively struck a compromise middle position – which some trial courts examining the issue have also likewise reached. ²⁵

Under the Court of Appeal’s middle-road position, “[c]ourts have held that serious bodily injury, as used in [Penal Code] section 243, is essentially equivalent to great bodily injury, as used, for example, in … [Penal Code] section 12022.7 … .” ²⁶ Significantly, Penal Code section 243 states that “’Serious bodily injury’ means a serious impairment of physical condition, including, but not limited to, the following: loss of consciousness; concussion; bone fracture; protracted loss or impairment of function of any bodily member or organ; a wound requiring extensive suturing; and serious disfigurement.” ²⁷ Thus, according to the Court, Penal Code GBI does not extend down to mere physical pain. ²⁸

However, while the Court of Appeal makes great effort to point out that defining GBI is situational, and that the same category of injuries which might be GBI in one case might not be GBI in another, the Court observes that “whether an injury constitutes great bodily injury is necessarily a question of degree.” ²⁹ Thus, for example, according to the Court of Appeal, depending on the case, while extensive bruises could be GBI in one circumstance, even a bone fracture might not qualify as GBI in another circumstance. ³⁰ This point is significant because, under Section 243, essentially any bone fracture constitutes SBI, but some fractures might not constitute GBI, under this Court’s opinion. 

In an attempt to provide further guidance that inadvertently muddies the waters, the Court of Appeal then lists various types of injuries that were considered to be GBI, while distinguishing them from types of injuries that, under the circumstances, were not considered to be GBI. ³¹ Specifically, the Court distinguished such GBI versus not GBI injuries as follows.

From this, while the Court of Appeal refused to give a more specific definition of Penal Code GBI, particularly by linking Penal Code GBI to Penal Code SBI (under Section 243(f)(4)) and by arguably approving the Howey Court’s rejection of TASER-caused injuries as GBI ⁴⁰, even through the muddied waters of this Court’s opinion, and despite the Court’s insistence that the definition is highly situational/circumstance-specific, there are some commonalities among the examples this Court gives that should inform our understanding of this Court’s definition of CPRA and Penal Code GBI.

In essence, although it never expressly states such a rubric, for this Court of Appeal, CPRA/Penal Code GBI appear to be: 

(1) life-threatening injuries (like a gunshot wound), particularly where such also causes some impairment in mobility; 

(2) injuries so severe that they result in widespread superficial injuries (like bruises, scrapes, etc.), plus some impairment of mobility; and 

(3) injuries that require stitches or hospitalization (e.g., an overnight stay).

The Custodial Agency Still Does The GBI Fact-Finding. Additionally, after some initial language suggesting that whether specific records’ injuries constituted GBI would require determination by a “jury” as factfinder (suggesting jury trials would be needed decide the GBI application in the CPRA context) ⁴¹, the Court later clarified that, on a particularized review of the responsive requested police investigative or personnel-file records, it is the custodial government agency which determines if the injuries documented in the requested records constitute GBI (and are thus disclosable). ⁴²

Unanswered Questions

The ACLU-Fresno Court’s refusal to create clear bright-lines, or even express guidelines, as to what injuries constitute GBI is likely to cause confusion and litigation disputes in the coming years that are unlikely to be resolved – unless and until GBI is more clearly defined by the California Supreme Court or the vagaries of the 2019+ statutes are revised by future legislation by the California Legislature. Chief among the unanswered questions remaining after the ACLU-Fresno Court’s opinion are these:

1. While the Court clarified that GBI is a Penal Code “significant or substantial physical injury” that cannot include “minor or moderate” injuries such as mere physical pain alone, the Court still left unanswered what specific injuries are GBI? ⁴³
2. If the custodial government agency determines that, on a particularized review, the police-force-caused injuries are not GBI, what mechanism (if any) does the CPRA requester then have available to challenge such a finding?

Conclusion

In sum, while the reasoning is questionable, the result of the Court of Appeal opinion is a narrower-scope definition of GBI than what ACLU arguably sought, even if such GBI rule is not as clear and narrow as what the government sought.

Footnotes

1. See City of Fresno v. Superior Ct. (2026) 119 Cal.App.5th 418.

2. See People v. Washington (2012) 210 Cal.App.4th 1042, 1047-48 [holding that “some physical pain or damage, such as lacerations, bruises, or abrasions” constitutes GBI].

3. See, e.g., Cal. Gov. Code § 7920.000, et seq. 

4. See, e.g., Cal. Gov. Code § 7923.600 (formerly Cal. Gov. Code § 6254(f), exempting law enforcement investigation records from public disclosure).

5. See, e.g., Cal. Gov. Code § 7927.705 (formerly Cal. Gov. Code § 6254(k), exempting records privileged by the Evidence Code from public disclosure), Cal. Penal Code § 832.7(a) (affirming the peace officer records privilege of Cal. Evid. Code §§ 1043 or 1046, unless Cal. Penal Code § 832.7(b) applies), and Cal. Evid. Code §§ 1043 and 1046 (establishing the Pitchess discovery procedure for discovery or disclosure of law enforcement officer personnel file records or information). 

6. SeeCal. Penal Code § 832.7(b)(1)(A)(ii) (amend. by SB 1421 in 2019), Cal. Gov. Code § 7923.625(e)(2) (formerly Cal. Gov. Code § 6254(f)(4)(C)(ii), amend. by AB 748 in 2019). 

7. Cal. Penal Code § 12022.7(f). 

8. See People v. Washington (2021) 210 Cal.App.4th 1042, 1047-1048 (“some physical pain or damage, such as lacerations, bruises, or abrasions” constitutes great bodily injury under Cal. Pen. Code, § 12022.7(f)); People v. Jung (1999) 71 Cal.App.4th 1036, 1042 (same); People v. Wallace (1993) 14 Cal.App.4th 651, 665-666 (cuts and burns from being flex-tied, burning sensation from an insecticide-like substance were great bodily injury); People v. Bustos (1994) 23 Cal.App.4th 1747, 1755 (multiple abrasions, lacerations, and contusions were great bodily injury); People v. Corona (1989) 213 Cal.App.3d 589 (a swollen jaw, bruises to head and neck and sore ribs were “great bodily injury”); People v. Sanchez (1982) 131 Cal.App.3d 718 (multiple abrasions and lacerations to victim’s back and bruising of eye and cheek were “great bodily injury”) disapproved on other grounds in People v. Escobar (1992) 3 Cal.4th 740, 751, fn. 5; People v. Jaramillo (1979) 98 Cal.App.3d 830, 836–837 (multiple contusions, swelling and discoloration of the body, and extensive bruises were “great bodily injury”). 

9. The police use of force definition of GBI, as evolved from case law determining when officers may use deadly force, and what constitutes deadly force, thus parallels California’s Government Code definition of serious bodily injury (or “SBI”). See Cal. Gov. Code § 12525.2(d)(4) (defining SBI as part of a statute specifying when police agencies must submit reports to the state tracking police uses of force, in other words, a force-disclosure statute); see also Acosta v. City & County of San Francisco, 83 F.3d 1143, 1145 n.3 (9th Cir. 1996) (observing that deadly force is lawful to protect against “great bodily injury”); Edson v. City of Anaheim (1998) 63 Cal.App.4th 1269, 1272 (approving jury instruction that officer deadly force is reasonable where evidence shows that the officer “reasonably believed” a suspect “posed an immediate threat of great bodily injury or death”); Munoz v. City of Union City (2004) 120 Cal.App.4th 1077, 1105-1106 (concluding that officers’ deadly force is authorized to prevent “great bodily injury”); Thompson v. County of Los Angeles (2006) 142 Cal.App.4th 154, 163-166 (use of a police dog – whose bite injuries typically result in punctures, lacerations, and contusions – does not constitute deadly force under California law); Bryan v. MacPherson, 630 F.3d 805, 813-814 (9th Cir. 2010) (holding that although TASERs cause puncture wounds, burns, and fall-related abrasions, they are not deadly force); Brooks v. City of Seattle, 559 F.3d 1018, 1025, 1028 (9th Cir. 2010) (distinguishing dart mode as causing loss of muscle control and fall-related abrasions from drive-stun mode, which does not); see generally Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396-397 (1989) (police use of force lawful when, from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, under the totality of the circumstances known to the force-using officer at the time, the force is objectively reasonable). Contrary to certain comments by the ACLU-Fresno Court, petitioners never contended that CPRA GBI should be construed to mean Government Code SBI. 

10. See City of Fresno v. Superior Ct. (June 10, 2026) Cal. S. Ct. case no. S296476 (denying petition for review). Notably, the Court of Appeal decision is currently binding law throughout the State of California. Specifically, this appellate court opinion controls subsequent proceedings in its case under the doctrine of “law of the case.” (Leider v. Lewis (2017) 2 Cal.5th 1121, 1127.) Additionally, because the decision is published, it is also binding on all of California’s superior courts under “stare decisis.” (See Cuccia v. Superior Ct. (2007) 153 Cal.App.4th 347, 353-354; Auto Equity Sales, Inc. v. Superior Ct. of Santa Clara Cty. (1962) 57 Cal.2d 450, 455.) 

However, a decision by one court of appeal is not binding on other courts of appeal. For example, one district, or even a division within a district, can refuse to follow a prior decision by a different district or division of the appellate court. (McCallum v. McCallum (1987) 190 Cal.App.3d 308, 315.) While there is no ‘horizonal stare decisis,’ appellate courts may decide to give substantial deference to another district’s or division’s prior decision. (Mega Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Superior Ct. (2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 1522, 1529.) Notwithstanding the foregoing, ultimately, the decision is binding on all lower courts and not binding on the appellate courts, which may exercise their discretion to follow the decision or not.

11. See, e.g., Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd. (2012) 566 U.S. 560, 566 (“When a term goes undefined in a statute [at issue], we give the term its ordinary meaning.”); Meza v. Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC (2019) 6 Cal.5th 844, 856-857 (a plain text reading looks only to the language of statute at issue and/or to its statutory scheme: not to unrelated statutes); California Teachers Assn. v. Governing Bd. of Rialto Unified School Dist. (1997) 14 Cal.4th 627, 633-634; People v. Drennan (2000) 84 Cal.App.4th 1349, 135 (explaining that a word takes its meaning from the company it keeps – the noscitur a sociis rule). Notably, the dictionary definition of GBI is: a “physical injury suffered by the victim of a violent crime that causes a substantial risk of death, extended loss or impairment of a body part or function, or permanent disfigurement”; “physical injury that is more serious than that ordinarily suffered in a battery.” (Merriam-Webster Legal Dict. Online, “great bodily injury” <http://www.merriam-webster.com/legal/great%20bodily%20injury> [as of June 5, 2025].)

12. SeeCal. Penal Code § 12022.7(f)(1) (emphasis added).

13. See, e.g., Merriam-Webster Legal Dict. Online, “great bodily injury” <http://www.merriam-webster.com/legal/great%20bodily%20injury> [as of June 5, 2025].

14. See City of Fresno v. Superior Ct. (2026) 119 Cal.App.5th 418, 443-444. 

15. See id.; Senate Rules Committee, Office of Senate Floor Analyses, Third Reading of Senate Bill 1421 (May 29, 2018) at p. 7.

16. It is worth noting that, despite pre-Cabrera case law defining GBI as “a significant or substantial physical injury” – as opposed to “moderate harm” or “trivial or insignificant injury [see, e.g., People v. Escobar (1992) 3 Cal.4th 740, 746] – sentencing enhancement GBI cases have still defined GBI down to just physical pain or seemingly minor injuries. See, e.g., People v. Washington (2021) 210 Cal.App.4th 1042, 1047-1048 (“some physical pain or damage, such as lacerations, bruises, or abrasions” constitutes great bodily injury under Cal. Pen. Code, § 12022.7(f)); People v. Jung (1999) 71 Cal.App.4th 1036, 1042 (same); People v. Wallace (1993) 14 Cal.App.4th 651, 665-666 (cuts and burns from being flex-tied, burning sensation from an insecticide-like substance were great bodily injury); People v. Bustos (1994) 23 Cal.App.4th 1747, 1755 (multiple abrasions, lacerations, and contusions were great bodily injury); People v. Corona (1989) 213 Cal.App.3d 589 (a swollen jaw, bruises to head and neck and sore ribs were “great bodily injury”); People v. Sanchez (1982) 131 Cal.App.3d 718 (multiple abrasions and lacerations to victim’s back and bruising of eye and cheek were “great bodily injury”) disapproved on other grounds in People v. Escobar (1992) 3 Cal.4th 740, 751, fn. 5; People v. Jaramillo (1979) 98 Cal.App.3d 830, 836–837 (multiple contusions, swelling and discoloration of the body, and extensive bruises were “great bodily injury”).

17. See City of Fresno v. Superior Ct. (2026) 119 Cal.App.5th 418, 436-439 (and related briefing by the City of Fresno).

18. See In re Cabrera (2023) 14 Cal.5th 476, 484. 

19. See Cal. Gov. Code § 12525.2(d)(4) (“’Serious bodily injury’ [SBI] means a bodily injury that involves a substantial risk of death, unconsciousness, protracted and obvious disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member or organ.”). 

20. See In re Cabrera, supra, 14 Cal.5th at pp. 481-484.

21. A third alternative would render GBI to be so arbitrary as to be meaningless: for, in that event, there could be a set of injuries that cause the permanent loss or impairment of a bodily member or organ that would be GBI on one day and where the exact same injuries would not be GBI on the next day.

22. While the Court of Appeal expressly rejected the government’s reading of Cabrera, and it instead suggested a Ven diagram approach, where SBI and GBI can overlap, but SBI must satisfy the specified conditions, where GBI can be in the eye of the beholder, as long as the injury is “significant or substantial,” the Court of Appeal nonetheless echoed the government’s approach in the Court’s observation that Penal Code GBI is substantially similar to Penal Code SBI. See City of Fresno v. Superior Ct. (2026) 119 Cal.App.5th 418, 439-442. 

23. See, e.g., City of Fresno v. Superior Ct. (2026) 119 Cal.App.5th 418, 436 n. 8 (citing Howey v. City of Fresno, Fresno Super. Ct. case no. 23CECG01468 (Nov. 1, 2023)). 

24. See City of Fresno, supra, 119 Cal.App.5th at p. 436 (internal quote marks omitted, citing to In re Cabrera (2023) 14 Cal.5th 476, 485). 

25. See, e.g., City of Fresno, supra, 119 Cal.App.5th at 436 n. 8 (citing Howey v. City of Fresno (Nov. 1, 2023) Fresno Super. Ct. case no. 23CECG01468); see also id. at 436 (holding that: “As stated, section 12022.7, subdivision (f)(1) succinctly defines great bodily injury as “a significant or substantial physical injury.” Case law has explained that great bodily injury does not include a “‘“moderate” or “minor”’” injury. (Cabrera, supra, 14 Cal.5th at p. 485; accord, Escobar, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 750.) Pain, lacerations, bruises or abrasions can constitute great bodily injury if the injuries are significant or substantial. (E.g., People v. Quinonez (2020) 46 Cal.App.5th 457, 464 [260 Cal.Rptr.3d 86]; People v. Washington (2012) 210 Cal.App.4th 1042, 1047 [148 Cal.Rptr.3d 748].) On the other hand, even bone fractures do not constitute great bodily injury as a matter of law. (People v. Quinonez, at p. 464.) Likewise, even knife wounds may be too minor to constitute great bodily injury. (People v. Martinez…[(1985)] 171 Cal.App.3d [727] at pp. 735–736.) To be clear, whether an injury constitutes great bodily injury is necessarily a question of degree. However, as a matter of law, minor and inconsequential injuries do not constitute great bodily injury under either section 12022.7, subdivision (f)(1) or section 832.7, subdivision (b)(1)(A)(ii).”). 

26. See City of Fresno, supra, 119 Cal.App.5th at pp. 439-440 (internal quote marks and citations omitted).

27. See Cal. Penal Code § 243(f)(4).

28. See City of Fresno, supra, 119 Cal.App.5th at p. 436 (“City is incorrect that every use of force that causes some pain will involve great bodily injury as a matter of law.”). 

29. See id. at p. 436 (emphasis added); see also id. at p. 435 (“It is true that the definition of great bodily injury under subdivision (f)(1) of section 12022.7 has been refined through case law. We acknowledge the definition of “great bodily injury” in section 12022.7 does not establish a bright-line rule. Resolution of whether a specific injury qualifies as great bodily injury is a factual question.”)

30. See id.; see also id. at p. 441 (“In many cases, injuries that are serious will also be great, and injuries that are great will also be serious.”). 

31. See id. at p. 435 (“Great bodily injury determinations will necessarily turn on the facts of each individual case, particularly in close cases. (citing Escobar, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 752 [“‘A fine line can divide an injury from being significant or substantial from an injury that does not quite meet the description. Clearly, it is the trier of fact that must in most situations make the determination.’”].) 

32. See id. at p. 435 (citing Escobar, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 750). Significantly, the dictionary definition of “extensive” is: covering or affecting a large area. Cambridge Online Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/extensive (last visited June 18, 2026); see also Bing.com. 

33. See id. at p. 435 (citing People v. Martinez (1985) 171 Cal.App.3d 727, 735-736). 

34. See id. at p. 435 (citing People v. Medellin (2020) 45 Cal.App.5th 519, 529; emphasis added). 

35. See id. at p. 436 n. 8 (approving Howey v. City of Fresno “[t]o the extent Howey construed ‘great bodily injury’ to require a showing of ‘significant or substantial injury’).

36. See id. at p. 435 (citing People v. Saez (2015) 237 Cal.App.4th 1177, 1189). 

37. See id. at p. 441 (citing People v. Quinonez (2020) 46 Cal.App.5th 457, 464-465). 

38. See id. at p. 435 (citing People v. Le (2006) 137 Cal.App.4th 54, 59; emphasis added). 

39. See id. at p. 436 (citing People v. Quinonez (2020) 46 Cal.App.5th 457, 464; People v. Washington (2012) 210 Cal.App.4th 1042, 1047). 

40. This is significant because TASERs cause temporary impairment to mobility, plus punctures, abrasions, burns, and fall-related contusions. See Howey v. City of Fresno, supra; Bryan, supra, 630 F.3d at pp. 813-814. 

41. See City of Fresno, supra, 119 Cal.App.5th at p. 441.

42. See id. at p. 434 n. 6 (“A request for records under either definition would require City to make factual determinations regarding the degree of injury involved.”); id. at p. 435 n. 7 (“Nothing before us suggests City is incapable of making these types of factual determinations.”). This is consistent with prior case law holding that “[g]overnment agencies are, of course, entitled to a presumption that they have reasonably and in good faith complied with the obligation to disclose responsive information.” American Civ. Lib. Union (“ACLU”) of N. Cal. v. Superior Ct. (2011) 202 Cal.App.5th 55, 85. 

43. This is because the Court adopted a know-it-when-we-see-it, case-by-case approach, rather than a specified type-of-injury approach. 

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