Clerk of the Ct. v. Rangel
Florida CA · Aug 29, 2025
- Jurisdiction
- state
- Court
- Florida CA
- Record ID
- clerk-of-the-ct-v-rangel-2025-08-29
- Observed outcome
- The court referred the attorney to The Florida Bar for disciplinary proceedings and sanctions.
- Known monetary consequence
- Not recorded
Why this matter warrants attention
The court referred attorney J. Tony Lopez to The Florida Bar for disciplinary proceedings due to his filing of an answer brief containing non-existent case law, fictitious quotations, and misstated holdings, compounded by his failure to supervise his paralegal or verify the brief's contents.
The court reasoned that sanctions were appropriate because the attorney admitted to filing a brief with fictitious authority and misquotes, failed to review the opposing party's reply brief that identified these errors, and failed to exercise professional judgment in supervising the work product produced by his paralegal.
An answer brief with one fake case, 14 false quotes, and 9 misstated holdings draws an automatic bar referral, not a warning.
Failure modes and consequences
- Fabricated Case Law
- Fictitious Quotations
- Misstated Holdings
- Failure To Supervise
- Failure To Verify Work Product
- Fake Citations
- AI attribution
- Implied
- Recorded tool
- Generative artificial intelligence (implied context of paralegal-assisted drafting)
- Known monetary consequence
- Not recorded
- Procedural posture
- The court issued an order to show cause regarding sanctions, received the attorney's admission of misconduct, and subsequently ordered a referral to The Florida Bar.
Damien Charlotin case archive
Publisher document archive. The recorded document is hosted in the upstream publisher archive.
Open underlying sourceA recorded source link is not a substitute for checking the underlying order, filing, opinion, or disciplinary record.
What this record does—and does not—establish
The court explicitly discusses the dangers of generative AI in the context of the attorney's reliance on a paralegal.
The record summarizes the outcome described in the linked public source. The recorded document is hosted in the upstream publisher archive. This page is not a substitute for the complete docket, subsequent history, or jurisdiction-specific advice.
Latest evidence review: Primary Document Verified (high confidence).
Controls suggested by the public record
- Verify the existence, citation, court, and precedential status of every authority before filing.
- Compare every quoted passage and pincite directly with the underlying opinion or filing.
- Confirm that each authority supports the stated proposition and has not been mischaracterized.
- Escalate unresolved verification failures before filing and preserve the responsible reviewer's signoff record.