Background
Gloria Dolores B. Acciavatti died on June 18, 2023, at age 93, leaving three adult children: Kim Dineen, Jeffrey Kotchka, and Jill Shibata. When Dineen sought appointment as estate representative, she discovered that all estate assets were titled in Kotchka’s name. In February 2024, Dineen filed a petition for adjudication of intestacy and formal probate. Both of Kotchka’s siblings opposed the petition. The trial court held a hearing and appointed Dineen as Personal Representative in July 2025. Kotchka timely appealed this decision.
In his appellate brief, Kotchka asserted various arguments regarding due process and alleged material errors of law and fact. However, upon review, the court discovered that Kotchka’s opening brief contained eight citations, six of which were deficient—including two citations to cases that simply do not exist. Kotchka later admitted he had used generative artificial intelligence (“Gen-AI”) to research and draft his brief and had done nothing to independently verify the accuracy of the citations.
The Court’s Holding
The court affirmed the trial court’s probate decision on two independent grounds. First, Kotchka failed to make a bona fide effort to comply with Arizona Rules of Civil Appellate Procedure 13 by including inaccurate and false citations in his opening brief. Because the brief lacked adequate legal authority and record citations to support its arguments, the claims were objectively groundless and the appeal was properly dismissed on this basis alone.
Second, the court held that citing hallucinated cases—false authorities generated by AI—constitutes sanctionable conduct under Arizona Revised Statutes Section 12-349, Arizona Rule of Civil Appellate Procedure 25, and the court’s inherent powers to manage its affairs. The court emphasized that all litigants, whether represented by counsel or proceeding pro se, bear personal responsibility for verifying the accuracy of their citations and must use reasonable diligence to ensure their filings comply with applicable rules and state the law truthfully. Reliance on Gen-AI tools does not excuse this requirement. The court awarded Dineen her reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs incurred due to Kotchka’s hallucinated and misrepresented citations.
Key Takeaways
- Gen-AI use in legal drafting is not inherently objectionable, but users must verify all citations and ensure accuracy before filing; failure to do so constitutes abuse of Gen-AI tools.
- Hallucinated case citations—nonexistent cases generated by AI—are sanctionable conduct whether included intentionally or unintentionally.
- Self-represented litigants are held to the same standards as attorneys and receive no special leniency for misrepresenting the law to courts.
- Lack of legal training and lack of conscious intent to deceive do not excuse the duty to reasonably verify the truth and accuracy of court filings.
- Misrepresenting the law through hallucinated authorities poses a profound danger to the judicial process and warrants meaningful sanctions.
Why It Matters
This decision is significant as one of the first published Arizona appellate opinions squarely addressing the use of hallucinated AI-generated case citations in court filings. The court recognized that Gen-AI hallucinations present a rapidly growing problem affecting courts nationwide, with over 1,700 instances of AI-generated hallucinated content already documented in legal filings. The decision provides important guidance that courts will impose sanctions—including awards of attorneys’ fees—on both attorneys and self-represented litigants who file briefs containing hallucinated authorities without verification.
The court balanced its acknowledgment of Gen-AI’s potential benefits for enhancing access to justice with a firm requirement that all users verify their work before filing. By holding that intentionality is irrelevant to sanctionability, the court established a negligence standard that applies regardless of whether the filer knew the citations were fake. This decision signals courts will enforce strict accountability for Gen-AI outputs, potentially influencing how litigants and lawyers use AI tools in legal practice going forward.
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