Pineda v. Campos
CA Arizona · Aug 7, 2025
What happened in this matter?
The court sanctioned counsel for submitting a brief containing fabricated citations, mischaracterized holdings, and non-existent quotations. The court referred counsel to the State Bar of Arizona for ethical review and ordered counsel to pay the appellee's costs on appeal as a sanction for violating appellate rules and the duty of candor.
- Why the court cared
- The court reasoned that counsel's repeated misrepresentations of the record and reliance on non-existent or incorrect legal authorities violated the duty of candor and appellate rules, necessitating a referral to the State Bar and an award of costs to the prevailing party to discourage future misconduct.
- Why it matters now
- A nominal $1 sanction plus bar referral still destroys a license — build mandatory citation-verification into the docketing workflow.
Why this matter is tracked
Misrepresented: Case Law | Counsel cited 'Cardoso v. Soldo' with reporter information that actually corresponds to a different opinion (Lund v. Myers) and the cited authority did not support counsel's proposition. Outcome: Referral to State bar; Ex officio adverse costs order. The appellate court found Husband's counsel made multiple misleading or incorrect citations and attributed quotations to cases that do not contain them. The court noted some citations used incorrect reporters that pointed to unrelated decisions, concluded the cited authorities did not support counsel's propositions (and in some instances contradicted them), forwarded the decision to the State Bar for possible ethical violations, and awarded costs to the prevailing party.
A nominal $1 sanction plus bar referral still destroys a license — build mandatory citation-verification into the docketing workflow.
Record details
What the record establishes about AI use
The court identified egregious citation errors consistent with AI hallucination.
Appellate review of a superior court order of protection; the court affirmed the order and issued sanctions against appellant's counsel.
Correction behavior is not separately verified in the current record.
Tracked discrepancy record
4 citation, quotation, or authority issues are recorded in the source dataset.
- Misrepresented: Case Law | Counsel cited 'Cardoso v. Soldo' with reporter information that actually corresponds to a different opinion (Lund v. Myers) and the cited authority did not support counsel's proposition.
- Fabricated: Case Law | Counsel cited Arjona v. Arjona to support a proposition about orders of protection, but the Arjona memorandum decision did not involve domestic violence or an order of protection and was vacated.
- Misrepresented: Case Law | Counsel cited Leon v. Plaza with incorrect reporter information and mischaracterized the case's holdings regarding naming specific incidents and statutory offenses.
- False Quotes: Case Law | Counsel attributed quotations to Savord v. Morton that do not appear in that opinion; the court found the quoted language absent from Savord.
Questions this record answers
- What happened in Pineda v. Campos?
- The court sanctioned counsel for submitting a brief containing fabricated citations, mischaracterized holdings, and non-existent quotations. The court referred counsel to the State Bar of Arizona for ethical review and ordered counsel to pay the appellee's costs on appeal as a sanction for violating appellate rules and the duty of candor.
- Why does Pineda v. Campos matter for legal AI risk?
- A nominal $1 sanction plus bar referral still destroys a license — build mandatory citation-verification into the docketing workflow.
- What does the public record establish about Pineda v. Campos?
- 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.
- Which source supports this Pineda v. Campos summary?
- The recorded source is Damien Charlotin case archive. It is classified as publisher document archive; review the linked material and subsequent docket history before relying on this summary.
Related matters
Related by court, jurisdiction, tool, or classified failure pattern. Similarity does not imply the same facts or outcome.