Picon-Diaz v. Bondi
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit · 10th Cir. · Colorado bar guidance , Kansas bar guidance , New Mexico bar guidance , Oklahoma bar guidance , Utah bar guidance , Wyoming bar guidance
Verified April 26, 2026
- Citation
- Picon-Diaz v. Bondi, No. 25-9530, 2026 WL 412348 (10th Cir. Feb. 13, 2026) (Kelly, J.)
- Decided
- February 13, 2026
Summary
In an immigration petition for review brought by a Colombian family seeking asylum and withholding of removal, petitioners' counsel cited a nonexistent Tenth Circuit decision, "Rodriguez-Romero v. Garland, 60 F.4th 1283 (10th Cir. 2023)," multiple times across the opening brief. The reporter cite actually pointed to United States v. Wesley, and the pincites pointed to United States v. Diaz-Menera, neither of which involved asylum or family social-group claims. The panel (Carson, Baldock, Kelly, JJ.; opinion by Judge Paul J. Kelly, Jr.) concluded the citation, quotations, and propositions appeared fabricated and were "likely the result of Petitioners' counsel's use of a generative artificial intelligence tool as a research and drafting aid without adequate review of the results the tool generated."
- AI tool:
- Unspecified generative AI
What sanction did the court impose?
The court denied the petition for review on the merits, granted counsel's motion to withdraw, and declined to impose sanctions. Instead it issued a formal warning to counsel, and to "all attorneys practicing before this court," that citations must point to real cases containing the quotations attributed to them and arguably standing for the propositions cited.
Why does Picon-Diaz v. Bondi matter for law firms using AI?
Picon-Diaz is a circuit-level escalation of the same failure mode as Mata v. Avianca, in an immigration appeal where the stakes for the clients were removal to Colombia. The Tenth Circuit declined to sanction but warned, on the record, every attorney practicing before it, which means future panels can cite Picon-Diaz when sanctioning the next lawyer who files a generative AI brief without checking the citations. For a managing partner, the operative point is that a “warning, not a sanction” outcome still produces a published opinion naming the firm’s case and explaining why its brief was unreliable.
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.
- The order does not name petitioners' counsel; the panel issued the warning by reference to counsel's role rather than by name.
- No CourtListener docket URL was located during verification; only the Westlaw citation (2026 WL 412348) is currently available per the order's own header.