Was Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing sanctioned over AI-generated citations?

Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing (Ct. App. Cal., 1st Dist., June 11, 2026) is a documented matter involving citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The recorded outcome was: Monetary penalty: $6,000 jointly and severally ($5,000 payable to defendants, $1,000 payable to the court); affirmed on appeal.. $6,000 in monetary penalties.

Which AI tool was involved in Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing?

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

June 11, 2026 · AI sanctions database

Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing

Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing 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: Ct. App. Cal., 1st Dist.
Date: June 11, 2026
Party: Lawyer
AI tool: Not identified in the order
Outcome: Monetary penalty: $6,000 jointly and severally ($5,000 payable to defendants, $1,000 payable to the court); affirmed on appeal.
Penalty: $6,000 in monetary penalties.

Fine

What the record shows

In a published decision, the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, affirmed sanctions the trial court had imposed on Lipeles Law Group, APC and its attorneys after the firm's opposition brief relied on citations the trial court found did not exist and on quotations the court found were fictitious and attributed to real but miscited cases. After issuing an order to show cause, the trial court imposed a sanction of $6,000 jointly and severally, with $5,000 payable to the defendants and $1,000 payable to the court. One attorney's declaration denied using AI or submitting any inaccurate citations, and the court observed it did not need to resolve the precise cause because the miscitations were sanctionable regardless. The Court of Appeal rejected the firm's challenges and affirmed.

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 ↗ · CourtListener record ↗

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 · Ct. App. Cal., 1st Dist.

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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