Incident Tracker / United States (federal)
Falkenstein v. Niles, No. 2:26-cv-07078-SB-PD (C.D. Cal.)
·US District Court, Central District of California·US-FEDPending
In the US District Court for the Central District of California, defence counsel filed materials with false quotations, misplaced propositions and representations not found in the complaint. Judge Blumenfeld ordered counsel to explain the AI certifications, which portions used AI, and what verification steps were taken.
- Court
- US District Court, Central District of California
- Date
- 2026-09-03
- Who used the AI
- Lawyer
- AI tool
- Not identified in the record
- Conduct
- Defendants' filings contained quotations and propositions that the court could not locate in the cited authorities, plus representations about the complaint that were not in the cited paragraph. The court ordered counsel to explain her generative-AI certifications, which portions used AI and how the filings were verified.
- Outcome
- Pending
- Penalty
- No monetary penalty recorded
- Regulatory outcome
- No separate regulatory disposition recorded
- Status
- Verified against listed sources
- Last checked
- 2026-09-11
Primary sources for this incident
Related regulation records for this incident
No related regulation record has been linked to this incident yet.
Similar incidents on the record
- James v. Conley, No. 1:23-cv-24467 (S.D. Fla.)2026-08-27 · US District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Magistrate Judge Elfenbein, report and recommendation) · PendingIn the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a magistrate judge found that plaintiff's Fifth Amended Complaint pleaded nonexistent police-training publications that counsel conceded were AI hallucinati…
- G.P. v. Jose Hernandez Arevalo, No. C26-284-KKE (W.D. Wash.)2026-09-08 · US District Court, Western District of Washington · WarningIn the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, plaintiff's counsel cited a nonexistent federal case in briefing against Turo. Judge Evanson described the citation as likely AI-fabricated, compelled arb…
- Booker v. The Kroger Co., No. 1:26-cv-02006-SDG (N.D. Ga.)2026-08-28 · US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division · FineThe US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia fined employment plaintiff's lawyer Christopher Johnson USD 8,000, payable to the court's sanctions fund, for citing four nonexistent or misrepresented authorit…
- Adams v. Matrix Providers, No. 1:23-cv-01996 (D. Colo.)2026-08-27 · US District Court for the District of Colorado · FineThe US District Court for the District of Colorado fined counsel Ms Pearson USD 1,000 after her brief cited a nonexistent case and attributed a quotation to Justice Scalia from an opinion dated 2020, four years after hi…
Summary record: the facts above are verified against the listed sources, but the court's reasoning and later dispositions have not yet been written up. It is excluded from search indexes until that is done.
Cite this record
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “Falkenstein v. Niles, No. 2:26-cv-07078-SB-PD (C.D. Cal.)”, safelegalai.com/tracker/falkenstein-v-niles (accessed 2026-09-16). Data: CC BY 4.0.