Was Buchanan v. Vuori, Inc. sanctioned over AI-generated citations?

Buchanan v. Vuori, Inc. (N.D. California, November 20, 2025) is a documented matter involving citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The recorded outcome was: Monetary penalty: $250, motions stricken, referral to professional conduct committee. $250 in monetary penalties.

Which AI tool was involved in Buchanan v. Vuori, Inc.?

The order in Buchanan v. Vuori, Inc. does not identify a specific generative tool by name. The court treated the citations as the product of an unverified AI-assisted drafting workflow.

November 20, 2025 · AI sanctions database

Buchanan v. Vuori, Inc.

Buchanan v. Vuori, Inc. is one matter in the Veritas record of US court proceedings involving AI-generated citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The summary below is drawn from the underlying court document, linked at the foot of this page.

Court: N.D. California
Date: November 20, 2025
Party: Lawyer
AI tool: Not identified in the order
Outcome: Monetary penalty: $250, motions stricken, referral to professional conduct committee
Penalty: $250 in monetary penalties.

FineBar referralProfessional sanction

What the record shows

The court found that attorney James Dal Bon's class settlement motion contained a case citation the court determined did not exist and case quotations it found were fabricated. Dal Bon admitted using about six different AI tools that failed to catch one another's hallucinations. The court sanctioned him under Rule 11(c), ordered him to pay $250 to the Clerk of Court, referred him to the Standing Committee on Professional Conduct, and found him not adequate class counsel. The opinion did not name the specific AI tools.

This entry reflects the court document as filed. The citations at issue could not be located in the reporters named at the time of the order. The reading here is descriptive of the public record and is not legal advice.

Source documents

Primary court document ↗

The test this filing did not run

Every matter in this record shares one mechanism: a citation that did not resolve to an opinion in the reporter named, in a brief that was filed before any verification step ran. Veritas runs that step. The Filing Risk Scanner extracts each citation, resolves it against reporter and public-record sources, and returns a verdict on each one — located, partial, or not located in reporter — before the brief is signed.

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Filed under · AI sanctions database · N.D. California

About this publication

Veritas is a pre-filing citation verification platform for law firms and in-house counsel. Every post on the audit log is written by the Veritas editorial team and cross-checked against the underlying sanctions order, standing order, or published opinion it references. Reporter citations are read in their named volumes. Quotations from court orders are checked against the docket.

The product was built by Andrew Zoll, founder of Veritas, who tracks generative AI sanctions in federal and state courts and turns each documented failure mode into verification logic the scanner runs. Veritas was built after the canonical Mata v. Avianca sanctions order made the verification gap a published failure mode of the bar.

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