Boettcher v. Boettcher
Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One · Ariz. Ct. App. · Arizona bar guidance
Conduct
A father's special action petition, filed through counsel, repeated a purported quotation that neither cited case contains and the court could not find in any Arizona case.
Consequence
The court struck the apparently false quotation but declined sanctions because it was the only citation problem and no one had raised it.
Lesson
The false quotation was struck; the court tied its leniency to the absence of other citation problems and of any objection by opposing counsel.
Verified September 28, 2026
- Citation
- Boettcher v. Boettcher, No. 1 CA-SA 26-0121 (Ariz. App. Aug. 14, 2026) (opinion)
- Decided
- August 14, 2026
Summary
Jeffrey Boettcher ("Father"), represented by counsel, sought special action review of a Maricopa County contempt order that gave Betty Boettcher ("Mother") sole legal decision-making authority, cut his parenting time to three supervised hours per week, and ordered a psychological evaluation and a parenting class. Father argued that the court never ordered him to comply with the parenting plan, which was incorporated by reference into the consent decree, and so he could not be held in contempt. The court noted that "both in the superior court and here, Father included the following purported quote: 'The court cannot hold a party in contempt for violating a parenting plan that was never ordered. Without a valid court order, contempt is legally impossible.'" He cited two cases for it, "neither of which contains that language," and the court "could not find it in any Arizona case." Petitioner's counsel of record was Laura V. Babione of Babione Law Firm, PLLC; the opinion attributes the filing to Father and does not discuss who drafted the quotation.
- AI tool:
- Unidentified (the opinion strikes an apparently false quotation and cites Acciavatti's hallucinated-citation holding, but does not attribute the quotation to AI)
- Amount or terms:
- None; the apparently false quotation was struck and the court declined to impose sanctions
How did the court address the AI-related conduct?
In a published opinion by Judge Perkins (joined by Presiding Judge Catlett and Judge Paton), the court accepted special action jurisdiction and granted relief in part. It held that violating a parenting plan incorporated into a signed consent decree can support contempt, but that a court may not use contempt sanctions to modify legal decision-making and parenting time without meeting the statutory requirements, and it vacated those modifications. On the quotation, the court stated: "We strike the apparently false quotation." It continued: "But because we identified no additional citation concerns, and opposing counsel raised none (including this one), we decline to impose sanctions," citing In re Estate of Acciavatti for the rule that "citing a hallucinated case in a legal filing is sanctionable conduct."
Why does Boettcher v. Boettcher matter for law firms using AI?
Boettcher is primarily a family law opinion about the limits of contempt sanctions, and the citation issue occupies a single paragraph. Its significance lies in where that paragraph appears: a published Division One opinion, issued a month after Acciavatti, citing Acciavatti in response to a represented party’s filing. The court treated the quotation, which appeared in Father’s filings “both in the superior court and here,” as apparently false after finding it in neither cited case nor any other Arizona case, and struck it.
The court explained why it stopped there. It “identified no additional citation concerns, and opposing counsel raised none (including this one).” The court tied its decision not to sanction to those two circumstances, while citing Acciavatti for the proposition that “citing a hallucinated case in a legal filing is sanctionable conduct.” The opinion does not say what would have led it to impose sanctions.
Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that quotations are a distinct verification task from citations: a quotation can be attributed to cases the court was able to review while the quoted words appear in none of them. Here the quotation survived from the trial-court filing into the special action petition.
Implications for your firm
Operational steps a firm reading this case may wish to consider documenting. Strategic and rule-application calls belong to your firm's attorneys.
- Verify every quotation against the cited opinion's text, including quotations carried forward from trial-court filings; this one appeared both below and on appeal.
- Review opposing filings for false quotations and raise them. The court declined sanctions in part because opposing counsel had not raised this one.
- Consider that Division One addressed a single false quotation by citing Acciavatti, both to strike it and for the rule that citing a hallucinated case is sanctionable, even when no other citation problems were identified.
Sources
Primary sources
- AI attribution: the opinion calls the quotation 'apparently false' and cites Acciavatti's hallucinated-citation holding, but does not state that the quotation was produced by AI. The AI attribution is a Charlotin tracker inference ('Implied').