Courts on AI / Fabricated or misquoted citations

Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing, LLC

California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Two · State appellate courts · CA · 2026-06-11 · No. A174202 · opinion

Fabricated or misquoted citations Competence, fees and billing

On 2026-06-11, in Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing, LLC, the California First District Court of Appeal imposed $6,000 in sanctions payable to the court and referred counsel to the California State Bar. Counsel filed opposition papers using quotations that did not appear in the cited source, multiple nonexistent or hallucinated authorities, and authorities used for propositions they did not support.

Disposition: The court affirmed the sanctions order imposing $5,000 payable to Harbor, $1,000 payable to the court, and publication/service requirements.
Recorded conduct: Lipeles Law Group’s opposition brief contained non-existent citations, at least eight fabricated quotations from five cases, and misrepresentations of controlling authority in opposing a stay. The sanctions order was affirmed. — outcome: fine; actor: lawyer; $6,000
Canonical record: Incident tracker entry — verified outcome, regulator disposition and related rules

What the court wrote

Verbatim from the court's document (public domain). Ellipses mark omitted text; nothing is paraphrased.

This appeal arises out of an order issuing sanctions against Lipeles Law Group, APC and its attorneys ... for their evident misuse of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in an otherwise meritless pleading

Court document: courts.ca.gov
Public copy first read: damiencharlotin.com
Read: 2026-09-08 · court's own copy read
Found via: charlotin-hallucinations-db
Notes: Read from the copy held by Damien Charlotin's AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC BY 4.0) of the court-authored document. Official copy located 2026-09-08 at www.courts.ca.gov; quoted passage confirmed. Re-coded from the document 2026-09-08 (independent second read).

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