Grant v. City of Long Beach

What sanction did the court impose?

In a published opinion by Judge Desai, the panel struck the opening brief in its entirety under Ninth Circuit Rule 28-1 and dismissed the appeal without reaching the merits. It held that the brief's deficiencies violated Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(8)(A): apart from the misrepresented and apparently fabricated authorities, the brief "includes only a handful of accurate citations, almost all of which were of little use to this Court because they were not accompanied by coherent explanations of how they supported Appellants' claims," and no reply brief was filed. Quoting Sekiya v. Gates, the court said counsel "must provide an argument which must contain 'appellant's contentions and the reasons for them, with citations to the authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant relies.'" The opinion imposes no monetary sanction, does not describe the dismissal as a sanction, and makes no referral to a bar or disciplinary body. The opinion quotes the argument colloquy, in which counsel said one case "was cited incorrectly" and that counsel "would have to just not rely on that case."

Why does Grant v. City of Long Beach matter for law firms using AI?

Here the Ninth Circuit ended an appeal over a brief built on misdescribed and apparently fabricated authority. The court did not frame its ruling as a sanction. It treated the brief as a material failure to comply with the rules governing appellate briefs, struck it under Circuit Rule 28-1, and dismissed the appeal, citing its discretion to dismiss “because of deficiencies in the briefs.”

The opinion shows its work on the two lead examples. Hydrick v. Hunter is a conditions-of-confinement case brought by persons civilly committed under California’s Sexually Violent Predator Act, and Wall v. County of Orange involves a dentist’s excessive-force and false-arrest claims; the brief cited both for claims about the removal of a child from a parent, and the court noted that neither opinion contains the words “parent” or “child.” It then listed eleven more authorities whose facts and holdings the brief misrepresented and two, Smith v. City of Oakland and Jones v. Williams, that “do not appear to exist.” The court’s language on the missing cases is partly hedged (“apparently fabricated,” alongside flat references to “fabricated case law”), and the opinion does not say how the citations came to be in the brief or mention AI.

The procedural sequence matters. Before argument the court issued a focus order directing counsel to be prepared to discuss the missing cases, and a judge raised them again at argument. The opinion quotes counsel’s answers, which described one case as “cited incorrectly” and turned to a different case, and states that counsel “did not acknowledge the fabrications” or “provide any other meaningful support” for the appellants’ claims. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that here the appellate client lost the appeal on the brief alone, and that the court’s advance notice gave counsel an opportunity to address the citations before the ruling.