Background
In a dissolution proceeding involving a 10-year-old child, the parties agreed to a stay-away order providing for reunification therapy followed by supervised and ultimately unsupervised visitation. After the guardian ad litem recommended supervised visitation, petitioner Lorie Jean Lisandrillo stopped the therapy and the respondent’s contact with the child. The trial court later found Lisandrillo in contempt, awarded compensatory attorney’s fees and costs, ordered future makeup timesharing, and made her responsible for half of the guardian’s fees going forward, subject to later reallocation.
Three days after the contempt hearing, Lisandrillo filed a 33-page motion to disqualify the trial judge, asserting numerous grounds that the Fourth District concluded either challenged adverse rulings or contradicted the hearing record. After the trial court denied that motion as legally insufficient, Lisandrillo filed a 61-page emergency petition seeking prohibition and also attempting to obtain certiorari review of seven additional rulings.
The appellate court found indicia that counsel’s filings contained AI-generated components, although the problem was not fabricated cases or citations. Instead, the court described lengthy, confusing, scattershot arguments, inaccurate factual allegations, reliance on an unofficial rough transcript, frivolous assertions, and an unsupported request for emergency treatment.
The Court’s Holding
The Fourth District denied the prohibition petition because the motion to disqualify was legally insufficient, frivolous, and untimely. The asserted grounds largely concerned adverse rulings, which do not establish judicial bias, and several allegations were refuted by the official transcript. Counsel also failed to seek disqualification during the hearing despite having opportunities to do so, waiting until after the adverse contempt ruling.
The court also denied certiorari relief. A prohibition proceeding challenging denial of judicial disqualification could not be used to seek review of seven separate rulings, and the challenged oral and interlocutory rulings were not eligible for certiorari review. The court noted that temporary custody and final fee or cost rulings would have an appellate remedy.
Separately, the court ordered petitioner’s counsel, Jaclyn R. Soroka, to respond within ten days—without using AI—and show cause why sanctions, including referral to the Florida Bar for possible disciplinary proceedings, should not be imposed for frivolous filings. The court emphasized that attorneys remain responsible for everything submitted under their signatures, whether AI-generated, AI-assisted, or produced by another means.
Key Takeaways
- Adverse rulings and allegations contradicted by the official record do not provide a legally sufficient basis to disqualify a judge.
- A party may not combine challenges to multiple distinct rulings in one extraordinary-writ proceeding, and oral or otherwise appealable rulings generally do not warrant certiorari review.
- Lawyers must independently evaluate AI-assisted work for factual accuracy, legal merit, clarity, and relevance; checking that citations exist is not enough.
- Labeling a matter an emergency merely to obtain expedited consideration abuses appellate procedure when no imminent, irreparable, and material harm is shown.
Why It Matters
The opinion warns that courts may sanction AI-assisted advocacy even when the cited authorities are real. The professional concern extends to issue churning, incoherent analysis, assertions contrary to the record, tactical emergency requests, and filings that burden courts and opposing parties.
For practitioners, the decision underscores that signing a filing represents that counsel has read it, has good grounds to support it, and is not using it for delay. Generative tools do not diminish counsel’s duties of competence, candor, independent professional judgment, and responsibility for the filing’s contents.