Hocog v. Cook-Huynh
Superior Court of Guam · Guam Super. Ct.
Verified October 1, 2026
- Citation
- Hocog v. Cook-Huynh, Civil Case No. CV0140-25 (Guam Super. Ct. Apr. 7, 2026) (Decision and Order Imposing Sanctions) (Iriarte, J.); see also Decision and Order (Guam Super. Ct. Aug. 11, 2025)
- Decided
- April 7, 2026
Summary
Plaintiffs' counsel Mark S. Smith, Esq., filed an Opposition to a motion to dismiss in a medical malpractice case that contained, by Judge Elyze M. Iriarte's count, "no less than eleven erroneous citations." The Court itemized at least three citations to incorrect statutes or cases, six fabricated quotations that did not appear in the cases cited, three misstatements of statutes or holdings, and one citation to a nonexistent statutory provision (7 GCA section 10105). Cited authorities included a vacated California decision Smith failed to flag, parallel-citation pin cites pointing to unrelated Hawaii and Guam criminal cases, and a Second Circuit decision (Penthouse Int'l v. Playboy) misrepresented as supporting apparent-authority estoppel. The Court granted the motion to dismiss on improper service grounds and treated the citation pattern as a competence and diligence problem under Guam Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1 and 1.3.
- AI tool:
- Unspecified generative AI
- Sanction amount:
- $1,500
What sanction did the court impose?
Motion to dismiss granted on independent service-of-process grounds, dismissing Dr. Cook-Huynh from the action and effectively ending the Hocogs' malpractice claims given the expired one-year statute of limitations under 7 GCA section 11308. As to Attorney Smith, the Court issued a formal warning under Guam R. Prof'l Conduct 1.1 and 1.3 and stated it "is in the process of reviewing Attorney Smith's misconduct in his Opposition and will take appropriate measures in a separate Order or proceeding." On April 7, 2026, in a Decision and Order Imposing Sanctions, the court found under GRCP 11 that Smith "acted incompetently and without diligence" and ordered him to pay the court $1,500 within 30 days. It denied the defendant's request for attorney's fees because the court, not a party, had initiated the proceeding.
Why does Hocog v. Cook-Huynh matter for law firms using AI?
Hocog is a useful counterpoint to the federal Rule 11 cases dominating the AI-sanctions docket: a U.S. territorial court that acted in two steps, and an AI tool that the judge declined to name. For a managing partner, the relevant signal is that the citation-integrity inquiry is now a standard appellate-style audit any judge can run, regardless of jurisdiction or whether AI is mentioned. Eleven defective citations in a single opposition brief, including a vacated California case cited without noting the vacatur and a pin cite that landed in an unrelated Hawaii criminal decision, were enough for the Court to flag a Rule 1.1 and 1.3 problem in its August 2025 order and reserve further measures for a follow-on proceeding. That proceeding ended on April 7, 2026 with a $1,500 sanction under GRCP 11; the court noted that Guam had no prior AI-hallucination case, making this its first.