Was TQJ, LLC v. Jennifer Esquivel et al. sanctioned over AI-generated citations?

TQJ, LLC v. Jennifer Esquivel et al. (C.D. California, February 12, 2026) is a documented matter involving citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The recorded outcome was: Order to show cause. No monetary penalty in this order.

Which AI tool was involved in TQJ, LLC v. Jennifer Esquivel et al.?

The order in TQJ, LLC v. Jennifer Esquivel et al. does not identify a specific generative tool by name. The court treated the citations as the product of an unverified AI-assisted drafting workflow.

February 12, 2026 · AI sanctions database

TQJ, LLC v. Jennifer Esquivel et al.

TQJ, LLC v. Jennifer Esquivel et al. 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: C.D. California
Date: February 12, 2026
Party: Lawyer
AI tool: Not identified in the order
Outcome: Order to show cause
Penalty: No monetary penalty in this order.

Show cause

What the record shows

The court identified four citations in the plaintiff's reply that it could not locate in Westlaw or any other legal database. Counsel who signed the brief stated he wrote it and did not use generative AI, and had no explanation for the nonexistent citations. The court issued an order to show cause, troubled that the citations wasted judicial resources.

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.

Run a free review Back to the full tracker →

Filed under · AI sanctions database · C.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.

AI sanctions database · Sample report · Pricing · Run a scan