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Incident Tracker / United States (state)

Samuel K. v. Focia

·Court of Appeal of the State of California, Second Appellate District, Division Two·US-STATEDismissalprovisional

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

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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.

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