California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Santos, 222 Cal.App.3d 723, 271 Cal.Rptr. 811 (Cal. App. 1990):
" '[A] statute must be read and considered as a whole, in order that the true legislative intention may be determined. All the parts of a statute must be construed together, and harmonized, so far as it is possible to do so without doing violence to the language or to the spirit and purpose of the act, so that the statute may stand in its entirety. For the purpose of harmonizing apparently conflicting clauses, each should be read with direct reference to every other which relates to the same subject, and so read, if possible, as to avoid repugnancy.' " (People v. Moroney (1944) 24 Cal.2d 638, 642, 150 P.2d 888, quoting 23 Cal.Jur. 760.)
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