This appeal is, in most respects, unremarkable. Plaintiff filed a complaint alleging a variety of employment-related claims, and the trial court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment, finding no triable issues as to any of those claims. Plaintiff challenges the grant of summary judgment on several grounds, none of which raises any novel questions of law or requires us to apply settled law in a unique factual context. In short, this is in most respects a straightforward appeal that, under normal circumstances, would not warrant publication.
What sets this appeal apart—and the reason we have elected to publish this opinion—is that nearly all of the legal quotations in plaintiff’s opening brief, and many of the quotations in plaintiff’s reply brief, are fabricated. That is, the quotes plaintiff attributes to published cases do not appear in those cases or anywhere else. Further, many of the cases plaintiff cites do not discuss the topics for which they are cited, and a few of the cases do not exist at all. These fabricated legal authorities were created by generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools that plaintiff’s counsel used to draft his appellate briefs. The AI tools created fake legal authority—sometimes referred to as AI “hallucinations”—that were undetected by plaintiff’s counsel because he did not read the cases the AI tools cited.
Although the generation of fake legal authority by AI sources has been widely commented on by federal and out-of-state courts and reported by many media sources, no California court has addressed this issue. We therefore publish this opinion as a warning. Simply stated, no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations—whether provided by generative AI or any other source—that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified. Because plaintiff’s counsel’s conduct in this case violated a basic duty counsel owed to his client and the court, we impose a monetary sanction on counsel, direct him to serve a copy of this opinion on his client, and direct the clerk of the court to serve a copy of this opinion on the State Bar.
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