Dineen/Shibata v. Kotchka

Issue

When the person who files a brief containing hallucinated case citations is a self-represented litigant rather than a lawyer, and therefore owes no duty under any rule of professional conduct, what authority allows an Arizona appellate court to sanction him, and does his lack of legal training or lack of intent to deceive make any difference?

Rule

The Arizona Court of Appeals grounded the sanction in a fee-shifting statute and an appellate rule rather than in any ethics rule, because the filer was not a lawyer. A.R.S. section 12-349(A)(1) provides that the court shall order attorneys' fees against a party who brings or defends a claim without substantial justification, and A.R.S. section 12-349(F) defines a claim without substantial justification as one that is groundless and is not made in good faith. Arizona Republican Party v. Richer, 257 Ariz. 237, 243, 247 to 248 (2024), supplies the content of those terms: a fees award requires both groundlessness and the absence of good faith, a claim is groundless if the proponent can present no rational argument based on the evidence or law, a claim is not groundless merely because it is fairly debatable or a long shot, and indifference to a claim's invalidity may constitute the absence of good faith even without any intent to harass or delay. ARCAP 25 permits sanctions appropriate in the circumstances of the case and to discourage similar conduct in the future, and ARCAP 13(a)(5) to (7) requires an opening brief to contain citations to applicable legal authorities and references to the record. Ramos v. Nichols, 252 Ariz. 519, 522 (App. 2022), waives issues not supported by adequate authority, and State v. Gomez, 231 Ariz. 219, 223 (2012), quoting Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 834 n.46 (1975), requires a self-represented litigant to comply with relevant rules of procedural and substantive law. The court also invoked its inherent power to sanction bad faith conduct under Hmielewski v. Maricopa County, 192 Ariz. 1, 4 (App. 1997), and referred to the reasonable inquiry duty in Arizona Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b).

Application

Gloria Dolores B. Acciavatti died in June 2023 at the age of ninety-three, leaving three adult children. Her daughter Kim Dineen applied for informal appointment as special administrator, reviewed the records, and discovered the estate had no assets to marshal because they were titled in her brother Jeffrey Kotchka's name. Dineen petitioned in February 2024 for adjudication of intestacy, determination of heirs and appointment of a personal representative, both of her siblings opposed the petition, and in July 2025 the superior court appointed Dineen personal representative and then entered an order for formal probate of the will. Kotchka appealed on his own behalf, arguing due process and fair hearing and material errors of fact and law. No opposing party caught the fabricated citations first. The Arizona Court of Appeals found them itself while reviewing the opening brief, and it ordered Kotchka to appear at a show cause hearing and testify under oath about them, asking him beforehand for a written explanation. He counted eight citations in the brief, of which six were deficient. The defects were of four kinds: cases cited for principles the case does not support, mis-citation to wrong pages or paragraphs, misstatement of rules enunciated in cases, and misrepresentation of case facts. Two of the cited cases simply do not exist. The brief contained no citations to the record on appeal at all. Kotchka's response is what settled the good faith question. In writing he said he had relied on independent internet research using artificial-intelligence-assisted research tools, and he blamed those tools for the inaccuracies. Under oath he testified that he had not looked at the court's own free guides for self-represented litigants, which are published on its website; that he had not used legal research tools or the materials available at public law libraries; and that he had not sought professional help to check his citations. He admitted he did nothing at all to verify them. The court said it appreciated his candour and then held that candour did not save him. He also never moved to amend the brief or offered to withdraw the appeal after Dineen's answering brief identified the failings, and he did not do so after the show cause hearing either, so the court found that he both asserted and maintained groundless claims. The court then wrote the part of the opinion that made publication worthwhile, noting that hallucinated authorities in court filings by self-represented litigants and lawyers alike had not been squarely addressed by any prior published Arizona authority. It was careful to say that using generative AI is not in and of itself objectionable, that such tools promise real gains in access to justice for people who cannot afford counsel, and that they can usefully check grammar, suggest edits and summarise long documents, provided the person signing the brief checks that the cases are real and correctly cited. Its warning about the tools was blunt, calling generative AI an unreliable narrator and researcher when left unchecked, and it collected authority for the point, including Sanders v. United States, 176 Fed. Cl. 163 (2025), Hardy v. Whitaker, 351 F.R.D. 84 (E.D. Mich. 2026), the Charlotin AI Hallucination Cases database, which it recorded as cataloguing 1,751 instances worldwide with 1,208 in United States filings, and Fletcher v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc., 168 F.4th 231 (5th Cir. 2026), for the proposition that the hallucination problem has no end in sight. It acknowledged the specific position of a self-represented litigant, who may not know the tools hallucinate, may be given a false sense of confidence by them, and often lacks convenient access to professional legal databases. None of that excused the filing. The court defined the sanctionable conduct as a failure to act with reasonable diligence to check and correct work product created with generative AI, which it called abuse of the tools in litigation. On the statutory basis, Dineen had requested costs and fees under ARCAP 25 and A.R.S. sections 12-341, 12-349 and 14-1105. The Arizona Court of Appeals awarded her costs under sections 12-341 and 12-342(A), declined in its discretion to award fees under section 14-1105, and rested the sanction itself on section 12-349 together with ARCAP 25 and its inherent powers. Applying Richer, it found the opening brief objectively groundless because it presented no argument supported by an accurately cited authority and no record citation, and it found the absence of good faith in Kotchka's admitted indifference rather than in any intent to deceive. His plea that he is not a trained lawyer and that the hallucinations were unintentional went only to the size of the sanction, not to whether one was warranted; accepting a defence of lack of ill intent, the court said, would legitimise reckless indifference to the truth of court filings.

Conclusion

The Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, affirmed the superior court's order admitting Gloria Acciavatti's will to formal probate and appointing Kim Dineen personal representative, treating Jeffrey Kotchka's noncompliance with ARCAP 13 as a waiver of all his issues. It struck each inaccurate and false citation from his opening brief, which left the brief with no supporting legal authority at all. As the sanction it awarded Dineen the portion of her reasonable attorneys' fees incurred because of the hallucinated and misrepresented citations, under A.R.S. section 12-349 and ARCAP 25, together with her costs on appeal, both contingent on her compliance with ARCAP 21. The opinion fixes no dollar figure, imposes no fine payable to the court, and makes no referral to any disciplinary body, the consequences that recur in the lawyer cases. Judge Brian Y. Furuya wrote for a unanimous panel joined by Presiding Judge Andrew M. Jacobs and Judge James B. Morse Jr., with no separate writing and no dissent. It is designated an Opinion rather than a memorandum decision, so it is published, citable, and binding on Arizona superior courts.

More concerning, however, is Mr. Kotchka’s failure to ensure the validity of legal citations in his opening brief that he obtained through use of generative artificial intelligence (“Gen-AI”), including his inclusion of hallucinated authorities.

Furuya, J., for a unanimous panel, in the opening paragraphs of the published opinion

Thus, in Arizona, self-represented litigants are held to the same standards as attorneys and are not afforded any special leniency.

Furuya, J., for the panel, stating the premise that makes the sanction possible against a filer who is not a lawyer

In short, when left unchecked, it is an unreliable narrator and researcher.

Furuya, J., for the panel, on generative AI used for legal research

Accordingly, citing a hallucinated case in a legal filing is sanctionable conduct.

Furuya, J., for the panel, stating the rule the opinion was published to announce for Arizona

As a result, Kotchka violated A.R.S. Section 12-349 in both asserting and maintaining his claims because they were groundless and not made in good faith.

Furuya, J., for the panel, identifying the statutory basis of the sanction

To accept a defense of lack of ill intent would legitimize reckless indifference to the truth and accuracy of court filings and tolerate some level of misrepresentation. This we will not do.

Furuya, J., for the panel, rejecting Kotchka's request for indulgence as an untrained self-represented litigant

Why it matters. This is the one entry in this collection where the person who filed the fabricated citations was not a lawyer, and it is the reason the entry earns its place. The other five sanctions decisions here, Caviness v. Atlas Air, Prososki v. Regan, Noland v. Land of the Free, Cassata v. Michael Macrina Architect and In re Irizarry Centeno, all turn on the duty of candour a lawyer owes as an officer of the court, and their machinery is professional: competence rules, candour rules, State Bar and grievance committee referrals, fines payable to a client protection fund. Jeffrey Kotchka owed none of those duties and no licensing body has jurisdiction over him, so the Arizona Court of Appeals reached instead for a fee-shifting statute, A.R.S. section 12-349, plus ARCAP 25 and its inherent power, and made the filer pay the opposing party for the extra work his fabricated citations caused. Dineen/Shibata v. Kotchka therefore shows what remains when the professional-conduct apparatus is unavailable, and it holds that the answer is not leniency: self-represented litigants in Arizona are held to the same standards as attorneys, and indifference to whether a citation is real supplies the bad faith the statute requires without any finding of intent to deceive.

Read the full opinion on CourtListener

This summary was written from the opinion itself. Every quotation above was located in the text of the decision it is attributed to. It is a summary for public education and is not legal advice.

Related reading