Trejo v. Amaya Hernandez
Appellate Court of Maryland · Md. App. Ct. · Maryland bar guidance
Conduct
Appellant's brief in an SIJS custody appeal cited three Maryland cases that the court found do not exist, out of seven cited.
Consequence
Portions of the brief relying on the non-existent cases struck; judgment affirmed with costs against appellant. No fine or referral.
Lesson
Here three of the seven cases cited did not exist, and the court struck the argument they supported before deciding the issue on real authority.
Verified September 30, 2026
- Citation
- Trejo v. Amaya Hernandez, No. 0741, Sept. Term 2025 (Md. App. Ct. Apr. 29, 2026) (unreported) (Reed, J.)
- Decided
- April 29, 2026
Summary
Amparo Trejo, the aunt with whom a young woman from El Salvador lived, petitioned the Circuit Court for Prince George's County for custody and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) predicate findings shortly before the young woman's twenty-first birthday. The circuit court denied a motion to expedite the hearing, the young woman turned twenty-one, and the court later denied a Motion for Order Nunc Pro Tunc asking it to enter the orders as of an earlier date. On appeal, the appellant's brief argued that Maryland courts may correct procedural lapses nunc pro tunc, citing Pickeral v. Fed. Land Bank of Balt., 177 Md. 601 (1940), Kiser v. State Roads Comm'n, 153 Md. 76 (1927), and Kellum v. Smith, 151 Md. App. 515 (2003). The court stated that "[o]f the seven cases cited in Appellant's brief, three of them do not exist," and that the brief "makes many legal assertions without providing citations," noting that its standard-of-review section "does not contain a single citation." The same Kiser citation had appeared in the appellant's circuit-court motion, where counsel attributed the missed deadline to counsel's own failure to file the emergency motion in time. No appellee brief was filed.
- AI tool:
- Unidentified (the opinion finds that three of the seven cases cited in the appellant's brief do not exist but does not mention AI or name a tool)
- Sanction amount:
- Non-monetary: portions of the appellant's brief relying on the non-existent cases struck
What sanction did the court impose?
In an unreported opinion by Judge Reed, the Appellate Court of Maryland struck "the portions of Appellant's brief as it pertains to this argument because the three cases cited as support do not exist," and affirmed. On the merits, it held that nunc pro tunc relief corrects clerical errors, not judicial ones, so the circuit court could not use it to enter orders it had declined to enter. It also held that the young woman was not substantively eligible for an SIJS predicate order in any event, because no custody or dependency order had been entered. Costs were assessed against the appellant. The opinion imposes no fine, fee award, or referral, and it does not name the attorney who filed the brief. A May 8, 2026 correction notice changed the costs line from "THE APPELLEE" to "THE APPELLANT"; it did not alter the citation findings.
Why does Trejo v. Amaya Hernandez matter for law firms using AI?
Trejo v. Amaya Hernandez is a short unreported decision in which the Appellate Court of Maryland dealt with non-existent cases by striking the argument they supported and deciding the appeal on authority it found itself. The opinion is explicit about the scale of the problem: “Of the seven cases cited in Appellant’s brief, three of them do not exist.” Footnote 4 then strikes the portions of the brief supporting the nunc pro tunc argument “because the three cases cited as support do not exist,” and footnote 6 repeats, as to Kiser v. State Roads Comm’n, that “this case does not exist.”
The court’s treatment is procedural rather than punitive. The opinion does not mention a show-cause order, name counsel, impose fees, or refer anyone, and it does not mention artificial intelligence. It resolved the appeal on real Maryland authority (Cave v. Elliot and Short v. Short on the clerical-versus-judicial error line) and on the federal SIJS regulations, holding both that nunc pro tunc relief was unavailable and that the young woman could not have qualified for an SIJS predicate order because no custody order had ever been entered.
Here the court identified the non-existent cases, struck the dependent briefing, and imposed nothing further. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that a struck argument leaves the court to decide the issue without the party’s framing, and that in immigration-adjacent matters with hard age-out deadlines there may be no second chance to present the argument properly.
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.
- Verify every case cited in a brief. The court struck the portions of the brief that rested on the three non-existent cases, then decided the nunc pro tunc issue on the merits using authority it identified itself.
- Review filings below for the same defect before carrying them into an appeal. The same non-existent Kiser citation appeared in the circuit-court motion and again in the appellate brief.
- Document the basis for any standard-of-review section. The court singled out a standard-of-review section with no citations as a separate briefing deficiency.
Sources
Primary sources
- AI attribution is a Charlotin tracker inference ('Implied'). The opinion finds three cited cases do not exist but does not mention artificial intelligence.
- The opinion says the three non-existent cases would be 'addressed in turn in footnotes,' but only Kiser is expressly identified as non-existent (footnote 6); footnote 4 strikes the argument supported by Pickeral, Kiser, and Kellum 'because the three cases cited as support do not exist.' The entry lists those three as the cited cases on the court's footnote 4 statement.