Florida's Fourth DCA Awards Appellate Fees Against Client and Counsel Over an AI-Assisted Brief

Key takeaways

• The Fourth District granted an opposing party's motion for appellate fees over a brief with a hallucinated case and misquoted authorities.
• The plaintiffs and their counsel are jointly and severally liable, according to the opinion.
• The opinion does not quantify the fees. The circuit court is to set the amount on remand.
• The opinion prints that it is not final until a timely-filed rehearing motion is disposed of. Current rehearing status is unverified.

What did the court decide, and what was wrong with the brief?

It decided two things. Judge Shaw wrote that the case "boils down to one issue", whether the circuit court correctly held the claims barred by the statute of limitations, and affirmed without further discussion. The court then took up the defendants' motion for sanctions against the plaintiffs and their counsel, which alleged fabricated case law, misrepresented holdings and fictional quotations, and asked for fees and costs. The court limited its opinion to the initial brief filed on appeal, not the plaintiffs' conduct in the circuit court. It granted the motion and awarded reasonable attorney's fees for the appeal.

Its own review found the following in the initial brief:

• Heavy reliance on a federal decision involving the same bank, City National Bank of Florida v. Louisiana Apple, LLC, to assert, with fictional quotations, that the bank had made admissions affecting this case.
• A case called Ogilvie v. Sebring Airport Authority, cited seven times with a fictional quotation. The court calls it a hallucinated case.
• A quotation and a proposition attributed to Mansolillo v. Parties by Lynn, Inc., which the court says has a different citation, court and year and supports neither.
• A quotation attributed to Seaboard Air Line Railroad Co. v. Holt that the court says does not appear in the opinion, and several propositions from Silvestrone v. Edell that it says are not accurately excerpted.

The court issued an order to show cause why it should not strike the brief or impose other sanctions, citing rule 9.410(a) and amended Fla. R. Gen. Prac. & Jud. Admin. 2.515(d)(2). The opinion's citation of that order prints a date we do not repeat, because it appears to be a typographical error. After the response, the court proceeded on the brief as filed while disregarding the phantom citations, quotations and misrepresented holdings.

How did the court reach fees under rule 9.410(b)?

By extension of prior cases. The court wrote that "a party's submission of hallucinated and inaccurately cited case law is sanctionable", citing Francois v. Vive Financial, LLC, Eclectic Synergy, LLC v. Seredin and the Second District's Rangel decision. It noted that those cases involved an appellate court's own authority to sanction under rule 9.410(a), then wrote that "we conclude that their reasoning should be extended to cases such as this one", where a party moves for fees as a sanction under rule 9.410(b) (2026).

It also cited a Southern District of Florida award of fees for time spent replying to a response containing one hallucinated citation. The operative sentence on liability reads: "The plaintiffs and their counsel shall be jointly and severally liable for the payment of this award."

What did counsel tell the court?

As the opinion recounts it, counsel admitted the brief "contained legal authorities, citations, quotations, and/or characterizations that were not adequately verified before filing." He said he accepted his client's offer to provide research materials and authorities, to manage the work efficiently and control litigation expense, and that his firm used generative AI "as one component of the legal research and drafting process." He attributed the errors to a verification process that failed, sought to replace the brief with an amended one that, the court notes, did not resolve every citation issue, and said he had changed his procedures.

The opinion does not say which tool produced which error. It records the client-research explanation and imposes joint liability; it does not discuss whether that explanation changes counsel's duty. Footnote 1 describes a pro se circuit-court complaint with many non-existent or misstated citations, which the court says were presumably from AI. That conduct was not sanctioned in this opinion.

What does this mean for Florida appellate and commercial litigators, and what should counsel do now?

The mechanism and the payer differ from the Fourth District's Lisandrillo order, which was a court-initiated show-cause order under rule 9.410(a) that imposed no sanction and is not applied here. Kid International involves a party's fee motion. The filing standard the court cited in its show-cause order is the signature representation in Rule 2.515.

Three points follow from the text. The court named the plaintiffs, who are the clients, as liable alongside counsel. The opinion says services connected with a rehearing motion, including a responsive pleading, are to be considered in computing the fees. And counsel's attempt to cure by amended brief did not avoid the award; the court proceeded on the original brief and noted the amended one did not resolve every issue.

These are our suggestions, not requirements stated in the opinion.

• Check every authority in an appellate brief against a primary source, including authorities a client or co-counsel supplied. Here the client supplied research and the opinion still imposes joint liability.
• Consider telling a client in writing that supplied research will be verified before use, since the client may be liable for what is filed.
• If you are opposing counsel and find fabricated authority, record the time spent searching for it. The opinion says the appellees' motion described that wasted time and money.
• Check the Fourth District docket for rehearing activity before treating the opinion as settled.

What are the key dates and parties?

What we did not verify

What we opened: the full four-page opinion from the Florida Courts media host, and the CourtListener record confirming the October 7, 2026 filing date and docket number. Our account of the errors and of counsel's explanation is the opinion's, not an independent check of the underlying briefs.

Rehearing: the printed notice that the opinion is not final until a timely-filed motion for rehearing is disposed of does not tell us the status today. We tried the Fourth District's site on October 24, 2026; its case portal loads through a script we could not run, so we could not read the docket. We do not know whether a rehearing motion has been filed or decided.

What we did not open: the text of rule 9.410(b) (2026), the show-cause order itself, and the briefs. We describe the rule only as the opinion does.

What we refuse to claim: any fee amount, that the court identified which AI tool caused which error, that it ordered a Florida Bar referral, that it sanctioned a client for conduct apart from joint liability for the award, or that the ruling applies outside Florida.

Related briefings

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• Fla. 4th DCA Show-Cause Order Over AI Slop Filings
• Florida AI Filing Rule 2.515 and the June Sanctions
• Florida 2nd DCA: Keefe and AI-hallucinated citations
• California High Court Refers AI-Linked Misquote to Bar