4DCA Division 3 Oral Argument - 2026/09/23 - Sep 23, 2026

argument

4DCA Division 3 Oral Argument - 2026/09/23

California Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Three 1h 58m 2 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 2 hours ago official recording ↗

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the central sanction issue addressed at the start of the oral argument?

Unknown 0:07

Uh Jeffrey DeJesse versus M R B marketing.

Unknown 0:46

Whenever a pellet's ready you may proceed.

Darren Richie 1:11

Good morning, Justices. May it please the court. I presume we will be taking up the sanctions matter first before argument. Is that your preference? Uh

Unknown 1:20

could good morning. Could we get your appearance please?

Darren Richie 1:23

Darren Richie on behalf of MRV, Global Dairy Services and Reinaldo Rivera.

Unknown 1:27

Thank you. Mr. Richie, our intention was um to allow you to argue uh however you'd like, uh, but we did want you to commit some time to the sanction sanctions issue. We did um afford you twenty five minutes. So however you want to allot that time, that's fine. I could uh watch the clock for you and let you know um When you get to a point where you'd like to reserve the remainder for a reply.

Darren Richie 1:51

Okay. Um my plan now hearing that would be to sacrifice my time mostly for my client and not to take up his arguments on behalf of my issue. So I'll start with the sanctioned motion, but I'll be brief.

Unknown 2:03

I thank

Darren Richie 2:03

you.

Unknown 2:04

Did you wish to have a set time to reply? 'Cause I could keep time for you.

Darren Richie 2:09

Perhaps a minute

Unknown 2:10

to reply. All right. Thank you very much.

Darren Richie 2:12

Thank you. This is not a position that any attorney wants to find themselves in, and I shudder to think. How often You all are hearing this issue. I would imagine it is plentiful and that's a shame. Despite the fact that AI seems to be prevalent so much so that it seems to have been in our lives forever at this point. As of November of twenty twenty five, when this opening brief was filed, the offending opening brief was filed. I honestly, genuinely had only heard about AI through the legal memorandums and newspapers that I saw where other attorneys were getting sanctioned. And I turned my face away and said, Boy, I never want that to be me. However, I never used it. And to this day I never use it. And I come before you with an explanation.

Darren Richie 3:10

But to be clear what follows is not an excuse. I owe a duty to this panel and to the court in general. And I had a lapse of care. I own a law firm. At the time that we were submitting this brief, we had a thousand and fifty open matters. I had hired about twelve months earlier an associate who I thought was wonderful. I couldn't believe the work products she was producing and I just praised her over and over. Come to find out, by virtue of receiving information from the Superior Court on a on a motion related to this very case. There were issues with two motions that were filed. And I was shocked. So I confronted the associate. This is my problem, not the associates. I'm just sharing the explanation. And she told me that she was using a new feature at Lexus Nexus called Protege.

Darren Richie 4:06

Protege is very similar, I guess, to what Lexus Nexus used to be, but it's their AI Plug in, I guess. And she admitted that she used it. And then it all made sense to me how she could grasp information so quickly, how she was able to articulate arguments and with refinement. And I talked to her about that. And the first thing I did was talk to Lexis Nexus. And we've put those emails before this panel. And they've been looking at re re remediating that particular issue. But we went deeper than that. There were four different filings on two different matters from this associate. We therefore disassociated that associate from those matters immediately. And we began a review of every filing. Since she had been hired.

Darren Richie 4:56

And that took a ton of time, but with respect to this particular matter. There were twenty hours of return time devoted to figuring out what the issue was. And we found out what the issue was. And not only did we disassociate her from the matters, she is no longer with the firm. after having completed twenty five hours of CLEs on AI. So I do believe wherever she ends up or wherever she is now, she will be much better off. But it is still my problem. Our process at that time was it goes from associate to the supervising managing attorney and then to me. I did read the motion. Unlike some of the cases that did discipline attorneys, I read the motion. But I never thought to myself in November of twenty twenty five that I needed to go and site check every single site.