Recent Family Law Cases

FAMILY LAW (Through 09/24/25)
By:  Andrew Botros, CFLS, CALS

The precise holdings in a given case are bolded. Auther’s note is italicized.

Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P.
9/12/2025 CA 2/3: B331918 — J. Edmon
Case Link

This opinion was published “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.”

In this case, the Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment for defendants but imposed sanctions on plaintiff’s counsel for filing briefs containing fabricated legal citations generated by artificial intelligence.

Trial Courts Have Inherent Authority to Reconsider Prior Summary Judgment Rulings

Following Le Francois v. Goel, the Court of Appeal held that while Code of Civil Procedure section 437c(f)(2) prohibits a party from making renewed motions for summary judgment without new facts or law, it does not restrict a trial court’s inherent authority to reconsider its own rulings. The court emphasized that “if a court believes one of its prior interim orders was erroneous, it should be able to correct that error no matter how it came to acquire that belief,” as long as proper notice and opportunity to be heard are provided.

This reaffirms trial courts’ broad discretion to reconsider interlocutory orders in service of accurate decision-making.

In a case of first impression in California, the Court of Appeal held that filing briefs containing fabricated legal quotations and citations generated by artificial intelligence constitutes sanctionable conduct. The court found that plaintiff’s opening brief contained 23 case quotations, 21 of which were complete fabrications created by generative AI tools including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.

The Court of Appeal imposed a $10,000 sanction on plaintiff’s counsel, finding the appeal frivolous because it “rest[ed] on negligible legal foundation” and violated California Rule of Court 8.204(a)(1)(B) by failing to support points with citations to actual legal authority. The court emphasized that “it is a fundamental duty of attorneys to read the legal authorities they cite in appellate briefs or any other court filings to determine that the authorities stand for the propositions for which they are cited.”

Attorneys Cannot Delegate Verification Responsibilities to AI

The Court of Appeal rejected counsel’s argument that he should not be sanctioned because he was unaware that AI could fabricate legal authority. The Court held that “before filing any court document, an attorney must ‘carefully check every case citation, fact, and argument to make sure that they are correct and proper. Attorneys cannot delegate that role to AI, computers, robots, or any other form of technology.’”

The Court of Appeal noted that the problem of AI hallucinations has been extensively discussed in cases and popular press for years, and that the State Bar of California issued guidance on AI use in November 2023 warning lawyers about “false AI-generated results.”

Scope of Sanctions for AI Misconduct

The Court of Appeal directed counsel to serve a copy of the opinion on his client and ordered the clerk to forward a copy to the State Bar. The Court of Appeal declined to award sanctions to the opposing party because they had not alerted the Court to the fabricated citations and appeared to become aware of the issue only when the Court issued its order to show cause.

Atlas v. Davidyan
8/29/2025 CA 2/8: B335661 — J. Rubin
Case Link

In this case, the Court of Appeal affirmed a default judgment exceeding $1.1 million entered as terminating sanctions against a pro per defendant who engaged in a pattern of discovery abuse.

Terminating Sanctions Require an Incremental Approach and Pattern of Willful Noncompliance

The Court of Appeal held that terminating sanctions are appropriate only after a trial court takes an incremental approach, starting with monetary sanctions and progressing to more severe penalties only when lesser sanctions fail to induce compliance. The trial court must find that the noncompliance is willful and that less severe sanctions would not produce compliance with discovery rules.

Here, the trial court imposed terminating sanctions only after hearing eight previous motions for discovery non-compliance over nearly two years.The defendant “engaged in a pattern of delay, submitted late and inadequate responses to written discovery, failed twice to appear for his scheduled deposition, refused to answer discovery and deposition questions without substantial justification; and provided evasive and inconsistent answers.”

The trial court initially gave defendant extensions, then imposed moderate monetary sanctions with new deadlines, then issue sanctions, and finally terminating sanctions when even severe penalties failed to result in compliance. This “patient and cautious approach” was consistent with the incremental method contemplated by the discovery statutes.