A quarter of the citations in filed briefs are Westlaw or Lexis ids. We list them, we do not guess.Coverage ›

Replays · Cal. Ct. App. · September 12, 2025

Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P.

An appeal from summary judgment on employment claims. The court affirmed, and its published opinion turned to the briefs: by the court's count, 21 of the 23 case quotations in the opening brief were not real quotations. It gave a few examples.

Court
California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Three
Decision
Opinion (certified for publication), September 12, 2025, 32 pages.
Docket
No. B331918
The filing
The appellant's opening and reply briefs.
Sanctioned
Appellant's counsel.
Sanction, in the court's words
"we impose a conservative sanction of $10,000. Such sanction shall be payable to the clerk of this court within 30 days of the filing of the remittitur." (Opinion (certified for publication), p. 30) The court also directed that the opinion go to the State Bar and that counsel give it to the client. It affirmed the judgment on the merits.
AI tool, as the decision states it
"generative AI sources such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok" (Opinion (certified for publication), p. 22)

What the court found

"That is, the quotes plaintiff attributes to published cases do not appear in those cases or anywhere else." (Opinion (certified for publication), p. 2)

"Had he read them, he would have discovered, as we did, that the cases did not contain the language he purported to quote, did not support the propositions for which they were cited, or did not exist." (Opinion (certified for publication), p. 25)

Each citation the court listed

as filedwhat the court saidwhat the register holds at this citationour default check today
1Schimmel v. Levin (2011) 195 Cal.App.4th 81, 86-87Quoted in the filing: "Section 437c(f)(2) embodies a legislative judgment that a party should not be allowed to bring multiple motions for summary judgment based on the same issues without demonstrating newly discovered facts or circumstances or a change in the law."The quoted language does not appear in Schimmel, or in any other case of which the court is aware; Schimmel also "does not contain a single reference to either summary judgment or section 437c." (p. 9)Schimmel v. Levin (Cal. Ct. App. 2011)Check this Quoted language not in the opinion
2Regency Health Services, Inc. v. Superior Court (1998) 64 Cal.App.4th 1496, 1504Quoted in the filing: "A continuance should not be granted when it is sought to facilitate procedural maneuvers rather than to promote justice.""Regency does not address the granting of a continuance, and the quoted language does not appear anywhere in the opinion." (p. 9)REGENCY HEALTH SERVICES v. Superior Court (Cal. Ct. App. 1998)Check this Quoted language not in the opinion
3Peake v. Underwood, 227 Cal.App.4th 428, 448 (2014)"Peake does not address the filing of a second dispositive motion, and the only sanctions at issue in that case were for filing a frivolous pleading." (p. 10)Peake v. Underwood (Cal. Ct. App. 2014)Found Found: Peake v. Underwood (Cal. Ct. App. 2014)
4Goldstine v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 2020 WL 6216738 (W.D. Wash. 2020)The court wrote that Goldstine appears not to be a real case. (p. 10)A Westlaw number, not a page. No open register holds these.Cannot verify Westlaw/Lexis identifier. Open registers cannot resolve it
5Heckert v. MacDonald, 208 Cal.App.3d 832, 837 (1989)Quoted in the filing: "frivolous litigation tactics""The words 'frivolous,' 'unfair,' and 'tactics' do not appear in Heckert, which concerns the appellants' claim that the trial court erred by refusing to order their real estate broker to pay their attorney fees as damages." (p. 10)Heckert v. MacDonald (Cal. Ct. App. 1989)Found Found: Heckert v. MacDonald (Cal. Ct. App. 1989)The quotation is too short to check (fewer than five content words).The brief quotes three words ("frivolous litigation tactics"), too few for the quote check, so the row reports the case only.

5 citations. Run September 24, 2026 with the default check, engine 0.5.0, register data of June 30, 2026: 2 Check this, 1 Cannot verify, 2 Found. Each citation was pasted as a line of text (the quoted words first, where we have them) and checked the way the checker checks a draft: no language model, nothing stored. The register column is a direct lookup of the volume and page.

What a check before filing would have shown

Two red rows (the check could not find the Schimmel and Regency quotations in those opinions) and one Westlaw number to look up. The Peake and Heckert rows would have come back Found: the default check does not read what a case holds, and the Heckert quotation is too short to check.

What this page does not show

  • The court introduces these as "just a few examples" (p. 9) and names none of the other quotations it counted, so the table has five citations, not 21.
  • The opinion does not say which brief each example comes from, except that the Schimmel quotation is in the opening brief.
  • Whether a case is still good law. This is not a citator.
  • Anything about the lawyers beyond what the court wrote.

Check your own draft

Paste the draft or upload the PDF. The default check reads every case citation and returns rows like the ones above in a few seconds, with no language model and nothing stored. It is free to try without an account. Then read what the court would read: every case you cite, at the page you cite.

Check a draft before you fileAll replays

Published September 24, 2026, updated September 24, 2026. We read the decision and copied the court's list; if we have misread it, write to hello@proofread.law. The rows are from the run dated above; they can change when the checker does.