Colbert v. County of Riverside
Key Findings
- A quoted passage attributed to California Government Code § 845.4 does not appear in the statute.
- Four cases cited for state-law immunity rules — Lucas v. City of Long Beach, Watson v. State of California, Lowman v. County of Los Angeles, and Perez v. Golden Empire Transit Dist. — are applied beyond their holdings.
- Government Code § 815.2 is stretched to cover liability theories the statute does not authorize.
Court Response
Disposition: Motion to dismiss granted. State-law claims dismissed without leave to amend; federal civil-rights claims dismissed with leave to amend (amended complaint due April 21, 2026).
In a footnote the court wrote: "Plaintiff's Opposition includes a quotation of purported language from § 845.4; however, the court could not locate the quoted statutory language in § 845.4 or any other section of the California Government Code. Nor could the court find any case, federal or state, containing the quoted language. This suggests counsel may have used artificial intelligence to draft the opposition memorandum and failed to confirm the accuracy of the citations and quotes."
Comparison: Direct match. The single citation-specific finding in the court's opinion — the fabricated § 845.4 quote — is the exact citation Opine flagged as a fabricated quote.
Every citation in the filing above was checked against the actual opinion or statute it claimed to cite. Fabricated items could not be verified to exist. Mischaracterized items are real cases described incorrectly. Potentially stretched items are real citations applied in ways that push beyond the holding — judgment calls rather than definitive errors.
Opine's citation verification currently covers California state courts and the 9th Circuit — the jurisdictions where our case-law and statute data is comprehensive.