Published opinion, 11 June 2026 · source · PDF · 28 pages
California Hospital Medical Center (2000) 78 Cal.App.4th 498, 502 [“Failure to provide an adequate record on an issue requires that the issue be resolved against [appellant]”].) 4 on Plaintiff’s multiple misrepresentations and erroneous citations of authority” that “permeate[] Plaintiff’s opposition.” On July 8, the court issued a tentative ruling granting Harbor’s motion to stay under the court’s inherent authority and the doctrine of exclusive concurrent jurisdiction and noticing in a footnote, “The court is separately issuing an Order to Show Cause re Sanctions based on [LLG’s] miscitation of cases, fabrication of quotations, and blatant misrepresentation of authority.” LLG “stipulated […]
5 The court compared quotations from the opposition to existing legal authority and stated, LLG “repeatedly and seriously misrepresent[s] the holdings of these and other cases” and “blatant misrepresentations appear throughout the brief.” The court pointed out, “the brief contains no fewer than eight fabricated quotations that purportedly appear in cases cited by” LLG and stated, again in bold font, “Literally every other purported quotation from a case in the brief is similarly fictitious.” The court expounded: “If these fabricated quotations were created by the use of a generative artificial intelligence tool such as ChatGPT, they are even more insidious than quotations from […]
Sansone requested the court not impose the proposed sanctions and attached as an exhibit a document he said was a printout of his Lexis citation check. At the July 11 hearing on the OSC, Schelly and Badawi appeared in person as the court had directed.6 The court began the hearing by explaining the reason for the OSC: “The brief contained inaccurate citations, misrepresentations of California law, and remarkably eight different purported quotations from cases that are as far as the court can determine, entirely fabricated, invented, they don’t exist. [¶] They don’t appear in any of the cited cases.
[¶] This is the worst example of misconduct by a lawyer that I think I’ve ever seen since I’ve been on the bench.” Having reviewed the declarations submitted in response to the OSC, the court expressed amazement that Sansone did “not acknowledge any mistake at all,” “makes no effort to explain how it is that the brief that he apparently authored contained fabricated quotations, that it misrepresented the holdings of cases 180 degrees opposite of what they actually held,” and had provided no apology.
[¶] But . . . did not fact check or cite check.” Badawi did not read the cases cited in the brief but represented she was familiar at the time with “the doctrine of exclusive concurrent jurisdiction” and acknowledged the principal argument made in the brief “is wrong” and “should have stood out to me”; Badawi conceded, “I should have not put my name on it.” 10 Although he assisted Sansone in filing his declaration, Schelly did not have any discussions with Sansone about the declaration’s substance, which did not offer any explanation or acknowledge any “mistakes” or “invented quotations” in the opposition.
It found the cases to be “substantially similar” and LLG’s argument in opposition to be “groundless.” The court found Sansone’s written testimony “entirely lacking in credibility” in view of the “glaring omissions” in his declaration, in which “he did not explain why the brief contains multiple inaccurate citations to two key cases” or “how it is that no fewer than eight fabricated quotations from five different cases found their way into the brief.” The court further found the responses of Lipeles, Schelly, and Badawi were “to put it mildly, disturbing” and in some instances “false.” For example, despite LLG’s representations it did not realize the firm had filed the Los Angeles action, […]
128, italics added.) By contrast, here, the OSC was issued by the court at the comparative start of the case, after months of unsuccessful meet and confer efforts between the parties, a joint case management statement explaining the concurrent jurisdiction conflict, a seemingly unnecessary motion to stay that attached the complaint from the Los Angeles action, and a completely false artificially fabricated pleading filed in opposition.
1120.) “In the last two [and a half] years, many courts have confronted briefs populated with fraudulent legal citations resulting from [parties’] reliance on generative AI” and “have concluded that filing briefs containing fabricated legal authority is sanctionable.” (Noland, supra, 114 Cal.App.5th at pp.