Lopez Mendoza v. SWI Finishing, Inc.
Response class R2, Owned It Late Episode 8
The case
The chatbot belonged to the treatise. The fake citations in this verified workers' compensation petition came from ChatSOC, the AI assistant built into Sullivan on Comp, the field's own research platform. It is the first tracker entry where the hallucination source was a legal publisher's own tool, and the Board's warning is the point of the case: a verified petition that misrepresents facts and law is sanctionable "whether or not it was prepared with the assistance of AI."
What happened
Defense counsel Ali Vassigh put specific questions to ChatSOC and carried its answers into a verified Petition for Reconsideration. Four citations were improper, including a case that does not exist and a real case miscited for a proposition it does not support, with the same bad argument repeated. In a supplemental petition, counsel admitted ChatSOC generated the false citations and that he had assumed its output was accurate.
The rule and the sanction
Labor Code section 5813 and WCAB Rule 10421: a verified petition is verified under penalty of perjury, and misrepresentation in one is prima facie sanctionable. The Board imposed $1,000 on counsel and his firm, jointly and severally, reduced from the noticed $2,500 because of real mitigation: full admission, genuine apology, a completed AI-ethics CLE, a firmwide policy against unverified AI authority, and firmwide training.
How the lawyer responded
R2, Owned It Late (the WCJ's Report flagged the fabricated citations; the supplemental petition filed afterward admitted the AI-tool origin; the Response to the NIT admitted responsibility, apologized, reported a completed AI-ethics CLE, and reported firmwide AI policies and training; sanction reduced from the noticed $2,500 to $1,000).
How it could have been avoided
A legal publisher's chatbot is still a chatbot, and its pedigree makes its output more plausible, not more reliable. Pull every cited case from Lexis or Westlaw and read the cited pages before filing. The Workers' Compensation Judge caught the fake in minutes with one search. Build the firm's verification policy before the first AI-assisted filing, not after the sanctions notice.
Watch the episode
This case is covered in Episode 8: ChatSOC Invented a Case. The Lawyer Paid for It. (watch on YouTube).