Rios v. Puente Hills Ford, LLC
Key Findings
- Seven cases cannot be verified to exist, including Zuckerman v. Underwriters at Lloyd's, Stanley v. Univ. of Southern California, and Hearn v. Howard.
- Code of Civil Procedure § 1542 — the canonical California waiver statute — is cited to a nonexistent provision accompanied by a fabricated quote.
- Nine additional quotes are attributed to real cases (Osumi v. Sutton, Armendariz, Fiore v. Alvord) that do not appear in the opinions.
Court Response
Disposition: Affirmed. The court declined to impose sanctions on Rios (appearing in pro per) but cautioned that “future submission of a brief to this court containing fabricated cases or quotations may result in sanctions or having the offending brief stricken.”
The court wrote that Rios "repeatedly cites cases for propositions they do not support" and that he "misquotes 10 existing cases (i.e., the quoted language appears nowhere in the decisions) and cites two cases that do not exist." Footnote 3 named the two nonexistent cases: Stanley v. Univ. of Southern California (98 Cal.App.5th 151) and Eustace v. Lynch (209 Cal.App.4th 1457) — "These reporter citations lead to decisions with entirely different names." Footnote 4 named Osumi v. Sutton and Fiore v. Alvord as cases where the "quotations do not exist."
Comparison: Direct match on every citation the court named. Opine had flagged Stanley and Eustace as ☠️ fabricated cases, and Osumi and Fiore as real cases with ☠️ fabricated quotes. Opine also flagged five additional fabricated cases the court did not individually call out, consistent with the opinion's observation that there were more problems than the footnotes enumerated.
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.