§ 2018.040.Restatement of existing law

When California recodified its discovery statutes, it wanted to make clear that the work product chapter was not quietly rewriting the underlying doctrine. This section says the chapter is intended to be a restatement of existing law relating to protection of work product, not a vehicle for changing it.

That framing matters for how courts read the chapter. A court applying these sections is not supposed to treat the recodified language as creating new protections or stripping away old ones; the chapter is not intended to expand or reduce the extent to which work product is discoverable under existing law in any action. Prior case law interpreting the work product doctrine remains the reference point for filling in the details these sections do not spell out.