What's at stake?
A Fresno law firm dodged a five-figure fine this week after parting ways with a veteran attorney who cited fake case law in a court filing on behalf of Fresno City Hall.
A law firm representing the City of Fresno will not have to pay a $10,000 fine after a Fresno County judge found 11 fake and improper case citations in one of its court filings.
In an April 14 tentative ruling, Fresno County Superior Court Judge Kristi Culver Kapetan wrote that she wouldn’t subject Aleshire & Wynder, LLP to the five-figure fine since the law firm took steps to “rectify the situation.”
“[T]he court is satisfied that the offending application was not the result of a direct action taken by those primarily handling this matter or anyone remaining with the firm,” Culver Kapetan wrote in her tentative ruling.
The “offending application” was filed in court in December, and it included four citations to case law that do not exist, along with seven other improper case citations — all exposed by Culver Kapetan in a blistering February order.
The filing was submitted to the court in an eminent domain lawsuit that the City of Fresno brought against business owners along Blackstone and McKinley avenues who say they cannot relocate their stores for the Blackstone McKinley Grade Separation Project.
In Culver Kapetan’s February order, she demanded attorneys from Aleshire & Wynder, LLP explain why their law firm shouldn’t be fined $10,000 for “frivolous contentions.”
The attorney who drafted that court filing, Carrie Raven, is no longer employed by Aleshire & Wynder, LLP, Fresnoland learned shortly after Culver Kapetan’s blistering ruling.
At the time of the December court filing, Raven was employed by the law firm but was not one of the main attorneys from Aleshire & Wynder, LLP representing the City of Fresno in the eminent domain lawsuit.
About two weeks after Culver Kapetan’s order, attorneys at Aleshire & Wynder, LLP withdrew the application they had filed, which included the document with the fake and improper case citations.
“The firm has since taken action to appropriately rectify the situation,” Culver Kapetan wrote in her ruling. With this outcome, it’s unclear if the use of AI led to fake and improper case citations making their way into the court filing in question.
However, Anthony Taylor, one of the main attorneys from Aleshire & Wynder, LLP representing the City of Fresno in the eminent domain lawsuit, wrote in a March filing that he had no knowledge of the improper citations until Culver Kapetan’s February order.
In his March court filing, Taylor wrote that he had never been disciplined by the State Bar of California, nor sanctioned or admonished by any court for making incorrect citations.
“I have never used ChatGBT (sic) or similar AI tools to prepare court filings,” Taylor wrote in his March court filing. “Moreover, I have given training to the litigation practice group of Aleshire Wynder to carefully check all citations in court filings and to not use ChatGBT (sic) or similar AI tools to draft court filings.”
In his March filing, Taylor added that Raven was no longer employed at Aleshire & Wynder, LLP as of Feb. 26, two days after Culver Kapetan’s February order.
“The improper citations in the application for writ of assistance are unacceptable and counter to the standards of practice for litigators of the firm,” Taylor wrote in his March filing. “Aleshire Wynder immediately took steps to address this situation.”
AI-generated information has increasingly found its way into court filings ever since the launch of ChatGPT a few years ago. Just this week, the State Bar of California disciplined two attorneys, accusing them of misusing AI in their cases.
