- Court
- Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal
- Case Number
- 4D2025-1151
- Date Filed
- May 27, 2026
- Judges
- Kuntz, C.J., Levine and Shaw, JJ.
- Disposition
- Affirmed; matter referred to Florida Bar
Background
Thomas Innocent and Roselene A. Innocent appealed a final judgment entered in favor of Meraki Installers, LLC in a lawsuit for breach of contract and foreclosure of a construction lien. The appeal raised issues on the merits that the court affirmed without comment. However, the court identified a separate and serious concern: the appellant’s initial brief contained multiple quotations purportedly from the trial transcript that could not be found anywhere in the actual trial transcript or otherwise in the record on appeal.
Holding
The Fourth DCA affirmed on all substantive issues without discussion but wrote separately to address the fabricated transcript quotations. After considering arguments from both parties’ briefs and oral argument on the issue, the court referred the matter to the Florida Bar for appropriate action.
The court cited its companion decision issued the same day, Eclectic Synergy, LLC v. Seredin, No. 4D26-0781 (Fla. 4th DCA May 27, 2026), along with Russell v. Mells, 426 So. 3d 913, 920 (Fla. 2d DCA 2025) (“When a lawyer cites imaginary legal authorities to our court as if they were law, we are compelled to refer that lawyer to the Bar because of the professional rules of conduct.”). The court also invoked Canon 3D(2) of the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct, which requires judges to take appropriate action when they have actual knowledge of a substantial likelihood that a lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar.
Key Takeaways
- Fabricating or misquoting record citations (trial transcript quotations) triggers the same duty of Bar referral as fabricating legal authority citations.
- The court treated fabricated record quotations with the same severity as the fictitious case citations addressed in Eclectic Synergy.
- Canon 3D(2) of the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct imposes a mandatory duty on judges who have actual knowledge of likely Bar violations to take appropriate action.
- The court’s referral arose from discrepancies identified during appellate review between brief quotations and the actual trial record.
Why It Matters
While the Eclectic Synergy decision issued the same day addressed fabricated case citations, Innocent v. Meraki extends the principle to fabricated record quotations — quotations purportedly from trial transcripts that do not exist in the record. This is particularly significant in the AI era because generative AI tools can fabricate plausible-sounding transcript quotations just as easily as they can fabricate case citations. Together with Eclectic Synergy and Avery v. Beauzil, this trio of decisions issued May 27, 2026 represents the Fourth DCA’s comprehensive framework for addressing AI-related integrity failures in appellate filings: fabricated citations (Eclectic Synergy), AI-hallucinated legal arguments (Avery), and fabricated record quotations (Innocent).