Incident Tracker / United States (state)
Samuel K. v. Focia
California Court of Appeal on 2026-02-26 in Samuel K. v. Winsley Focia found the self-represented party's opening brief contained three citation defects, including Medical Board v. Superior Court and People v. Panah, involving nonexistent authorities, fabricated or misattributed quotations. The court dismissed the appeal, assessed appellate costs, and addressed the defective authorities.
- Court
- Court of Appeal of the State of California, Second Appellate District, Division Two
- Date
- 2026-02-26
- Who used the AI
- Litigant in person
- AI tool
- Not identified in the record
- Conduct
- Focia's opening brief contained numerous fabricated legal citations and relied almost completely on fabricated and inapposite legal authority.
- Outcome
- Dismissal
- Penalty
- No monetary penalty recorded
- Regulatory outcome
- No separate regulatory disposition recorded
- Status
- Provisional — written by the court-decisions pipeline, awaiting the editor
- Last checked
- 2026-09-08
Primary sources for this incident
Related regulation records for this incident
No related regulation record has been linked to this incident yet.
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Cite this record
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “Samuel K. v. Focia”, safelegalai.com/tracker/samuel-k-v-winsley-focia (accessed 2026-10-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.