Any witness who is subpoenaed in any civil or administrative action or proceeding shall be given written notice on the subpoena that the witness may be entitled to receive fees and mileage. Such notice shall indicate generally the manner in which the request for fees and mileage should be made.
§ 2065.Fees and mileage; notice of entitlement
Title 5. Of the Rights and Duties of Witnesses · Enacted 1979 · no amendments on record · Last verified July 29, 2026
In one sentenceSection 2065 requires that a witness subpoenaed in any civil or administrative action or proceeding receive written notice, printed on the subpoena, that the witness may be entitled to fees and mileage, along with a general indication of how to request them.
Full Text of § 2065
Plain-English Summary
A person served with a subpoena often has no idea that showing up can come with reimbursement attached. This section closes that information gap by requiring the subpoena itself to carry a written notice telling the witness that fees and mileage may be available. The requirement reaches beyond court trials: it applies to any civil or administrative action or proceeding, so a witness called before an agency, not only a judge, gets the same heads-up.
The section does not set the fee amount, define eligibility, or create the payment obligation itself; those questions are answered elsewhere. What this section requires is narrower and procedural: the notice has to appear on the subpoena, and it has to indicate, in general terms, how the witness should go about asking for the money owed. Read alongside Section 2064’s attendance duty, the pairing makes sense: a witness has to comply with a subpoena regardless of whether fees have been offered up front, so the least the law can do is make sure the witness knows reimbursement might be on the table and roughly how to pursue it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Section 2065 itself set the amount of witness fees or mileage?
No. It only requires that the subpoena give written notice that fees and mileage may be available and generally describe how to request them; the amounts and eligibility rules come from other law.
Does this notice requirement apply only to court trials?
No. It applies to a witness subpoenaed in any civil or administrative action or proceeding, not just a trial before a judge.
Where does the required notice have to appear?
On the subpoena itself, as written notice given to the witness at the time of service.
Does a witness have to already know the reimbursement process to benefit from this section?
No. The point of the section is to tell witnesses who might not otherwise know that fees and mileage could be owed, and to point them toward how to ask for them.
Amendment History
(Added by Stats.1979, c. 67, p. 171, § 1, operative July 1, 1980.)
Source & verification. Section text is reproduced verbatim from
the West's Annotated California Codes / Thomson Reuters. Enacted by the California Legislature.
Last verified July 29, 2026.
· Official source
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