Anita Krishnakumar et al. v. Eichler Swim and Tennis Club
Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara · Cal. Super. Ct. (Santa Clara Cnty.) · California bar guidance
Verified May 14, 2026
- Citation
- Krishnakumar v. Eichler Swim and Tennis Club, No. 24CV432638 (Cal. Super. Ct. Santa Clara Cnty. May 29, 2025) (Chung, J., tentative ruling)
- Decided
- May 29, 2025
Summary
Wrongful death plaintiffs moved for a preferential trial setting under Code of Civil Procedure section 36(b) on behalf of four minor children of the decedent. Defendant Eichler Swim and Tennis Club opposed, and its opposition brief twice cited and once quoted "Ortiz v. Ford Motor Co. (2020) 50 Cal.App.5th 665" for the proposition that minor wrongful-death beneficiaries do not necessarily have a substantial interest. Judge Frederick S. Chung searched extensively for the case and quotation, found that the cited reporter page belongs to an unrelated costs decision, and noted that the only Lexis hit for the quoted language was Defendant's own opposition brief. The court characterized the citation as "completely made up" and observed that an AI-generation explanation, suggested by Plaintiffs in reply, was "the most benign explanation," with intentional deception implicating Rule 3.3 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct.
- AI tool:
- Unspecified generative AI (implied by court)
What sanction did the court impose?
Tentative ruling granted Plaintiffs' motion for preferential trial setting and advanced the trial from January 12, 2026 to September 22, 2025, rejecting Defendant's argument on the merits. The court did not impose a monetary sanction but flagged the fabricated Ortiz citation as "highly problematic" and a potential Rule 3.3 violation if intentional, noting that the phony case was Defendant's principal authority and difficult to characterize as accidental.
Why does Anita Krishnakumar et al. v. Eichler Swim and Tennis Club matter for law firms using AI?
Krishnakumar shows that the AI hallucination risk is not confined to plaintiffs’ filings or solo practitioners: here it surfaced in a defendant’s opposition brief in a wrongful-death case, where a fabricated appellate citation served as the principal authority. For a managing partner, the case underscores two operational points. First, even when no monetary sanction issues, a court’s published finding that counsel’s “key legal citation” is fictitious is itself a reputational and disciplinary event, expressly framed by the court as a possible Rule 3.3 candor violation. Second, the court detected the fabrication using a workflow any associate could replicate, pulling the cited reporter page and running the quoted passage through Lexis, which is a reasonable floor for any firm’s AI-output verification protocol.
Sources
Further reading
Source PDF is a Westlaw printout mirrored from the Damien Charlotin hallucination database. We are working to add the underlying court docket (PACER, CourtListener, or court website) as a second source.
- Whether the tentative ruling was contested or became final, and whether any subsequent OSC or Rule 3.3 referral followed, was not confirmed from the order text.