Monday, December 1, 2025

Today's AI sanctions case

2/1 (per curiam) publishes this opinion today, granting a motion to strike an opening brief and sua sponte imposing monetary sanctions of $7500 to the court; and allowing appellant to file a new brief. 

    It is undisputed that appellant’s attorney, Fahim Farivar, filed a brief containing numerous fabricated quotations—that is, language falsely attributed to published decisions. By filing a brief that misrepresents legal authority, Farivar unreasonably violated longstanding rules of this court. Regardless of whether inaccuracies in a brief are the result of using artificial intelligence (AI) tools or some other drafting process, as Farivar and appellant argue occurred here, the signatory attorney is responsible for the content of the brief and subject to sanctions for inaccuracies it contains.
    Accordingly, we grant respondent’s motion to strike appellant Peiman Shayan’s opening brief. In addition, on the court’s own motion, we award monetary sanctions, payable to the court, against Farivar, and allow appellant to file a new brief.

... 

we strike appellant’s opening brief and require appellant to file, within 10 days of the issuance of this order, a corrected opening brief. Appellant’s corrected brief may differ from the version originally filed only to the extent it corrects or omits the fabricated citations and quotations in the original version. Appellant shall file and serve both a final version of the new brief as well as a redline version.

And also from 2/1, from last week, see the unpub'd part at pp. 34-37 here.
It is also presumptuous to assume he would not be “caught”; Attorney Lucas apparently believes we do not read cases cited in briefs. More disturbing is his apparent disregard of his duties as an officer of the court. Our legal system depends on the integrity of counsel and the bench. Citing nonexistent authority or misciting holdings of cases tarnishes the integrity of the process.
For these reasons, we will order Attorney Lucas to show cause why sanctions should not be imposed on him for his misuse of artificial intelligence in briefing this appeal. The order to show cause is issued concurrently with this opinion.