§ 2029.200.Definitions

Every term this article relies on gets pinned down here first. A foreign jurisdiction means either another U.S. state or a foreign nation, which is what lets the article reach both interstate and international cases. A foreign subpoena is one issued under the authority of a court of record in that foreign jurisdiction, the document that starts the whole process rolling once it arrives in California.

The remaining definitions round out the article's scope. Person is defined broadly to include individuals along with corporations, trusts, partnerships, government entities, and other legal or commercial entities. State reaches beyond the fifty states to include the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, federally recognized tribes, and U.S. territories and insular possessions. And subpoena covers any document, however it's labeled, that requires someone to attend and testify at a deposition, produce or permit inspection of documents, electronically stored information, or tangible things, or permit inspection of premises. The section also defines a foreign penal civil action, a category of case authorized by another state's law solely to punish an offense against that state's own public justice, a definition that matters because other sections of this article limit what discovery tools are available for that kind of action.