Kid International v. City National Bank of Florida

What happened

Kid International v. City National Bank of Florida is an appeal from a final summary judgment holding the plaintiffs' claims barred by the statute of limitations. The plaintiffs are two limited liability companies and an individual; the defendants are the bank and a property company. Winsor Daniel Jr. of The Daniel Firm represented the plaintiffs on appeal.

The defendants moved for sanctions, saying the plaintiffs had cited fabricated case law in the circuit court and on appeal. The Fourth District limited its review to the initial brief and confirmed five categories of error:

• heavy reliance, with fictional quotations, on a federal case involving the same bank to assert admissions the bank had not made;
• "citing a hallucinated case, Ogilvie v. Sebring Airport Authority, 841 So. 2d 529 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003), seven times" and quoting from it;
• citing Mansolillo v. Parties by Lynn, Inc. with the wrong citation, court and year, for a proposition and quotation it does not contain;
• attributing to Seaboard Air Line Railroad Co. v. Holt a quotation that is not in the opinion;
• excerpting Silvestrone v. Edell inaccurately for several propositions.

A footnote adds that the plaintiffs' earlier pro se complaint cited thirty-two cases, fifteen of them nonexistent, "presumably from the use of artificial intelligence"; the amended complaint filed through counsel did not repeat them.

What the court did

The court ordered the plaintiffs to show cause why the brief should not be stricken or other sanctions imposed. In response, counsel admitted that the brief "contained legal authorities, citations, quotations, and/or characterizations that were not adequately verified before filing" and accepted responsibility. He explained that he had accepted his client's offer to supply research materials and authorities, and that his firm used generative AI as "one component of the legal research and drafting process." His amended brief, he conceded, did not resolve all the citation problems.

The panel in Kid International proceeded on the initial brief while disregarding the fabricated material, quoting its own precedent that "Such phantom authority cannot assist any litigant and must be expressly disregarded by this court." It affirmed the summary judgment without discussing the merits. The finding on how the brief was prepared rests on counsel's admission: the court described the initial brief as "drafted with the assistance of AI and input from the plaintiffs".

The sanction in Kid International came on the defendants' motion. The court extended reasoning from cases decided under its own authority in Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.410(a) to a party's fee motion under rule 9.410(b), and it:

• awarded the defendants their reasonable attorney's fees for the appeal;
• directed the circuit court to set the amount on remand;
• made the plaintiffs and their counsel jointly and severally liable.

Where it stands

The opinion carries the standard notation that it is not final until disposition of a timely motion for rehearing. If a rehearing motion is filed, the time spent on it counts toward the fee award. No rehearing ruling and no fee amount were located as of October 21.

Kid International joins the appellate fee sanction in Whiting v. City of Athens, although the Fourth District did not cite that decision.

The obligation it engaged

Clause 3 of the Standard, independent authority, is the clause Kid International engages most directly: authorities supplied by the client and produced with an AI tool went into the brief without being confirmed against the decisions themselves. Clause 4, checkability before adoption, describes the failure counsel himself identified, a verification process that did not catch the errors before filing. Clause 2, non-delegation, applies to the research that was handed to the client and to software.

The lesson for an expert witness carries over closely. Materials offered by the client or retaining counsel, and output from any research tool, are leads to check, not sources to cite. An expert should open every authority or data source a report relies on, whoever supplied it, and note who supplied it and when it was verified.

Sources

• Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal (copy hosted for the AI Hallucination Cases database) · October 7, 2026
  Kid International, LLC v. City National Bank of Florida, No. 4D2025-2599

What could not be confirmed

The opinion dates the order to show cause Aug. 7, 2024, which predates this 2025 appeal number and is likely a typographical error for 2026; the order itself was not opened. The opinion is not final until any timely rehearing motion is resolved, and no rehearing ruling or fee amount was located as of 2026-10-21. The AI tool used by counsel's firm is not named.