We now have three opinions from the California Courts of Appeal addressing counsel’s use of AI-generated citations. What lessons can be gleaned from comparing these decisions? Specifically, what do they say about the possible disciplinary implications of the use of AI generated hallucinated citations?
The first decision was Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P. (2025) 114 Cal.App.5th 426, filed on September 12, 2024. This was followed in short order by People v. Alvarez (2025) 114 Cal.App.5th 1115, filed on October 3, 2025, and the most recent of our trifecta, Schlicter v. Kennedy, filed on November 17, 2025.
In each of these cases, counsel was sanctioned in an amount above the $1,000 threshold for reporting to the State Bar of California (Bus. & Code §6068(o)(3). Independent of the lawyer’s duty to report the sanction, the Court of Appeal in each case referred the matter to the California Bar, as required by Cal. & Prof. Code, § 6086.7(a)(3) and Cal. Rule of Ct. 10.17. So we know that each of the lawyers involved will be investigated. The discipline prosecutors in the State Bar’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel (OCTC) take complaints and referrals from judges very seriously.
And, of course, AI hallucination cases are happening almost every day. There is even a website tracking them https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/. Tracking them not only in the United States but all over the world. The trend seems to be increasing.
Noland, from division 3 of the Second Appellate District, is the first published California case to deal with AI hallucination. It is, as the Court of Appeals remarked, otherwise unremarkable, an appeal of a summary judgment by the plaintiff in an employment case, that would almost certainly be an unpublished decision but for the fact that nearly all the citations in the plaintiff/appellant’s opening brief were AI hallucinations. These were undetected by counsel because he did not read or check the cases. The Appellate Court issued an order to show cause (OSC) to counsel prior to oral argument, requiring him to explain why he should not be sanctioned for filing a frivolous appeal. He responded by admitting that he used AI to write the brief but that the appeal was otherwise meritorious. While taking full responsibility for the fake citations, he claimed he was unaware that generative AI could hallucinate citations, and he has since educated himself about those dangers.
The Court of Appeal declined to allow counsel to file amended briefs. It found that a sanction for filing a frivolous appeal was appropriate. The court bottomed its analysis on Code of Civil Procedure section 907, which allows for sanctions where an appeal is frivolous or intended for delay and section 128.7, providing that attorney can be sanctioned for submitting pleading for which the attorney does not have a belief “formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances” that the “legal contentions therein are warranted by existing law.” The Court also cited Cal. Rule of Ct. 8.276(a)(4) permitting sanctions where a party unreasonably violates the California Rules of Court, and California case law, including Marriage of Flaherty (1982) 31 Cal. 3d 637, for the proposition that an appeal is frivolous if it is prosecuted for an improper motive or indisputably has no merit. The Court also cited a number of non-California cases imposing sanctions of AI hallucinated citations.
The Court of Appeal did not discuss any Rules of Professional Conduct, including Rule 1.1, which governs competence, or Rule 3.3, which governs candor toward a tribunal. Rule 1.1 was amended several years ago to include new Comment 1: “The duties set forth in this rule include the duty to keep abreast of the changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.” Rule 3.3(a)(2) states that a lawyer shall not “knowingly misquote to a tribunal* the language of a book, statute, decision or other authority.” Emphasis added.
The lack of citation to the Rules of Professional Conduct is not surprising. The Courts of Appeal have no jurisdiction to enforce these Rules, beyond the mandate in statutes and the California Rules of Court to report “misconduct” to the State Bar of California. There is ample authority supporting the imposition of sanctions, and counsel was sanctioned $10,000.
But the Appellate Court in Alvarez (Division 1 of the Fourth Appellate District) was not so restrained. It did cite Rule 3.3(a)(2) in its order to show cause and alleged that the lawyer had violated it, and also alleged that the lawyer had violated his duty of candor under Business and Professions Code section 6068(d). The offending document in Alvarez was an opposition to dismissal in a criminal prosecution matter. The attorney in this case also responded to the OSC and took responsibility for the AI hallucinated citations, explaining that he relied on his staff to draft the opposition and did not closely check it despite being aware of the dangers of AI hallucination.
The criminal prosecution context was very important to the Fourth DCA’s analysis:
The conduct here is not as egregious as what occurred in Noland. But it is particularly disturbing because it involves the rights of a criminal defendant, who is entitled to due process [citation] and representation by competent counsel [citation]. Courts are obligated to ensure these rights are protected. [citations] When criminal defense attorneys fail to comply with their ethical obligations, their conduct undermines the integrity of the judicial system. It also damages their credibility and potentially impugns the validity of the arguments they make on behalf of their clients, calling into question their competency and ability to ensure defendants are provided a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Thus, criminal defense attorneys must make every effort to confirm that the legal citations they supply exist and accurately reflect the law for which they are cited. That did not happen here.
Alvarez, slip opinion at page 4. While finding counsel’s conduct in Alverez less egregious than Noland’s, the Court of Appeal also found him culpable of serious misconduct for a lack of candor to the trial court, in violation of section 6068(d), which wasn’t addressed in the Noland decision. The Court of Appeal sanctioned counsel with a $1,500 fine.
Schlichter is the last case of our recent trifecta, from the Division 2 of the Fourth DCA. Schlicter, like Noland, is a civil case involving hallucinated citations in an appeal.
Like Noland, and unlike Alvarez, there is no discussion of the attorney’s duty of candor under Rule 3.3 or section 6068(d). The Schlichter court’s analysis centered on the lawyer’s unreasonable violation of California Rule of Court 8.204(a)(1)(B) “by not supporting] each point with citations to real (as opposed to fabricated) legal authority” which is sanctionable under rule 8.276(a)(4).
But unlike both Alvarez and Noland, the Schlichter court found the lawyer’s confusing responses to the appellate court’s OSC to lack candor and credibility. Notwithstanding that, the court issued a sanction of only $1,750, far less than the $10,000 in Noland and only slightly more than the $1,500 in Alvarez.
Predicting what the State Bar will do with these three cases is a long walk in a dark tunnel with only the dimmest candle to light the way. There are no published discipline cases to light the way, and there may not be for some time, if ever. But some probabilities can be discerned.
The lawyer in Noland seems to have the best chance of avoiding discipline, based on his testimony that he was unaware of the dangers of AI hallucination. If this testimony is credited, the State Bar is probably looking at a violation of Rule 1.1, the competence rule. The duty of competence includes the duty to understand the risks and benefits of technology used in the practice of law, as set forth in Comment 1 to the Rule, discussed above. The violation here might as centered on the failure to be aware of the risks of AI as on the failure to check the citations.
An unknown factor might be the “wilful ignorance” doctrine recently elucidated in the Review Department’s recent Trimarche case (In the Matter of Trimarche (Review Dept. 2025) 6 Cal. State Bar Ct. Rptr. 145. The Review Dept. found that Trimarche’s conscious effort over four years to avoid learning about the applicable rule meant he could not have had a reasonable good-faith belief that the rule did not apply to his conduct. “Willful blindness is equivalent to actual knowledge.” A disciplinary investigation might very well drill down on how this lawyer managed to avoid the substantial discussion about the danger of AI hallucination over the last few years.
Counsel in Alvarez seems to have the worst chance of avoiding discipline, given the Court of Appeal’s legal conclusion that he violated his duty of candor to the court. He admitted that he was aware of the danger of AI hallucination and yet did not check the citations, instead relying on his staff. Civil findings are entitled to great weight in State Bar Court if supported by substantial evidence. Does the evidentiary record really support the lack of candor finding? Questions like these provide reasons why the civil courts (as in Noland and Schlicter) might do well to avoid attempting to enforce rules and statutes within the ambit of the disciplinary system. Alvarez feels like a competence case, not a candor case, a conclusion that the Court of Appeal itself seems to have accepted by finding the conduct less egregious than Noland.Schlicter is a tough call, mainly because the lawyer’s explanation in response to the court’s OSC is so confusing. It really looks like the lawyer had no idea why the AI hallucinations occurred (“If I knew how it happened, it would not have happened.”) This is consistent with a common thread in many of the AI cases of the work actually being done by someone else. The competence violation is there, but if the State Bar believes that the lawyer was not candid with the Court of Appeal, it could turn out to be more, perhaps even crossing the threshold for public discipline.