What is the risk of civil liability under section 1230 of the California Civil Code of Civil Rule 1230?

Remarkably, we have found no published California cases applying the "risk of civil . . . liability" branch of the exception in section 1230. There are many cases applying the exception for statements exposing the declarant to criminal liability, but they arise in the context of criminal prosecutions, and having reviewed a number of them we believe their holdings should be relied upon with caution in the civil context. They typically arise in one of two situations: either the prosecution seeks to introduce an absent declarant's statement that also incriminates the defendant, or the defendant seeks to introduce such a statement to show that a third party and not himself is the perpetrator of an offense. Both of these situations raise a number of complications not present in civil litigation. These include the privilege against self-incrimination; the right to confront adverse witnesses; the ease with which evidence of incriminating statements by absent declarants may be manufactured; the relative ineffectuality, in many criminal prosecutions, of the threat of a perjury prosecution as a deterrent to false testimony; and the potential for a miscarriage of justice if credible evidence of third-party culpability is categorically excluded. Considerations like these have led courts to require particularized indications of trustworthiness where an extrajudicial statement is offered as a declaration against penal interest. (See People v. Duarte (2000) 24 Cal.4th 603, 610-611.) These considerations are largely absent in the context of civil litigation.