Incident Tracker / United States (state)
Washington v. Justice, No. 2D2025-2678 (Fla. 2d DCA 2026)
·District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District·US-STATEDismissal
In Florida's Second District Court of Appeal, self-represented appellants filed a brief citing eleven cases the court could not find and likely generated by AI. After an unavailing show-cause response and a pattern of frivolous filings, the court dismissed the appeal and barred further pro se filings tied to the underlying case.
- Court
- District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District
- Date
- 2026-10-07
- Who used the AI
- Litigant in person
- AI tool
- generative AI (unspecified)
- Conduct
- The self-represented appellants' initial brief cited eleven cases the court could not locate. Ordered to produce the cases or show cause, they did not provide them, calling the citations scrivener's errors from manual consolidation. The court said it was likely the fake citations were the product of generative AI and found reliance on fictitious cases, together with a pattern of frivolous filings, sanctionable.
- Outcome
- Dismissal
- Penalty
- No monetary penalty recorded
- Regulatory outcome
- No separate regulatory disposition recorded
- Status
- Verified against listed sources
- Last checked
- 2026-10-07
What was fabricated or misused
- Eleven cases cited in the appellants' initial brief that the court could not locate; the appellants did not produce copies when ordered
What the court said
“The Washingtons submitted an initial brief citing eleven cases that this court could not locate. We issued an order that directed them to either provide copies of the eleven cases or show cause why sanctions should not be imposed for submitting a brief that relied on fictitious case law.”
“It is likely that the inclusion of the fake case citations is the result of generative artificial intelligence.”
“Based on the Washingtons' reliance on fictious cases, unavailing response to this court's order, and pattern of frivolous filings, we dismiss this appeal.”
Timeline
- Court dismissed the appeal and directed the clerk to place in an inactive file further pro se filings tied to the underlying case unless signed by a Florida Bar member.
Why this case matters
The Second District held that a citation to a non-existent case breaches the accuracy a filer certifies by signing a document, so it could sanction under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.410(a) without applying the 2026 amendment to Rule 2.515(d)(2) retroactively. It paired dismissal with a pre-filing bar, treating repeated fictitious-case filings by a litigant in person as an abuse of court access rather than a one-off error.
Practice note
A self-represented litigant who signs a filing represents that its cited authorities exist and are accurately cited, whatever tool produced them. Describing fake citations as scrivener's errors or blaming drafting pressure does not excuse them, and a court can both dismiss the appeal and bar further unrepresented filings when the conduct recurs across cases.
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, “Washington v. Justice, No. 2D2025-2678 (Fla. 2d DCA 2026)”, safelegalai.com/tracker/washington-v-justice (accessed 2026-10-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.