Francois v. Vive Financial
Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal · Fla. 4th DCA · Florida bar guidance
Conduct
Pro se appellant cited multiple nonexistent authorities in both the trial court and the appellate court in a Rule 1.540(b) motion context.
Consequence
Affirmed; no sanctions imposed; cautioned that future nonexistent-authority filings may result in Rule 9.410(a) sanctions.
Lesson
Fictitious citations filed in the trial court as well as the appellate court both draw a single appellate warning; each level of false filing is an independent ground for sanctions.
Verified May 14, 2026
- Citation
- Francois v. Vive Fin., LLC, No. 4D2025-2088, 2026 WL 758289 (Fla. 4th DCA Mar. 18, 2026) (Ciklin, J.)
- Decided
- March 18, 2026
Summary
Pro se appellant Davos Francois appealed an order denying his motion to vacate a default final judgment under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.540(b) in County Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County (L.T. Case No. COCE22-048202, Judge Michele McCaul Ricca). The Fourth District Court of Appeal (Ciklin, J., with Kuntz, C.J. and Gross, J., concurring) affirmed on the merits, holding that lack of standing cannot be raised for the first time in a Rule 1.540 motion. The court wrote separately to address a "troubling issue": multiple authorities Francois cited in his filings in both the trial court and the appellate court do not exist. The court characterized the submission of fictitious or fabricated case law as "sanctionable" whether the product of "carelessness, misunderstanding, or reliance on generative artificial-intelligence tools," quoting Friend v. Serpa, 425 So. 3d 51 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025).
- AI tool:
- Generative AI (court identified 'reliance on generative artificial-intelligence tools' as a cause of fictitious citations; specific tool not named)
What sanction did the court impose?
Affirmed on the merits. No sanctions imposed. Appellant cautioned that future filings containing nonexistent authorities may result in sanctions under Fla. R. App. P. 9.410(a). Court quoted Friend v. Serpa and cited Goya v. Hayashida, 418 So. 3d 652, 656 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025), Russell v. Mells, 50 Fla. L. Weekly D2609 (Fla. 2d DCA Dec. 10, 2025), and Gutierrez v. Gutierrez, 399 So. 3d 1185, 1188 (Fla. 3d DCA 2024) as examples of courts sanctioning fictitious-case submissions.
Why does Francois v. Vive Financial matter for law firms using AI?
Francois v. Vive Financial is the third in the Florida Fourth District’s 2025-2026 AI-citation sequence, following Goya v. Hayashida and Friend v. Serpa. Two new elements distinguish it from those prior decisions. First, Justice Ciklin explicitly attributed the fabricated citations to “generative artificial-intelligence tools.” Second, the opinion records that fabrication occurred at two levels of court, in both the trial court filings and the appellate brief.
Sanctions exposure widens because of that dual-level finding. A litigant cannot now argue the AI-citation errors were isolated to the appellate brief. Submitting defective AI-generated research in both the trial court and the appellate court documents a pattern at two points in the proceeding. On a second offense, that pattern reads as a stronger predicate for sanctions than a single-level filing error.
Ciklin closes with a quotable formulation: “Artificial intelligence may assist in research and drafting, but it cannot replace the lawyer’s or litigant’s duty to ensure that every authority cited is real, accurate, and applicable.” Among the 2025-2026 Florida corpus, this ranks as one of the most direct judicial statements of the human-verification duty. Ciklin frames it as universal principle, not case-specific admonition. Counsel can cite it in any subsequent motion for AI-citation sanctions in Florida appellate courts.
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.
- The court's 'troubling issue' framing for nonexistent citations in both trial court and appellate filings signals that defective AI-assisted research that surfaces below carries through on appeal, compounding the sanctions exposure at each level.
- The citation chain in Francois (Friend v. Serpa → Goya v. Hayashida → Gutierrez v. Gutierrez) illustrates that the Fla. 4th DCA has built a coherent three-opinion cluster in 2024-2026; use this cluster when briefing AI-citation sanctions motions in the Fourth District.
- Ciklin, J.'s closing line ('Artificial intelligence may assist in research and drafting, but it cannot replace the lawyer's or litigant's duty to ensure that every authority cited is real, accurate, and applicable') is a quotable judicial statement of the verification duty suitable for AI-use policy documentation.