california rules-of-court
Are there precedents where attorneys have been punished for plagiarism in their court filings?
<p>Let's assume that plaintiff and his attorney wrote a complaint and sued you in a state court. You later discover that plaintiff has brutally copy pasted multiple paragraphs from a different, unrelated complaint filed several years ago by a different attorney that he does not even know.</p>

<p>Are there precedents where attorneys that have heavily borrowed multiple paragraphs from other complaints have ever been punished? Do there have to be gotchas (e.g. misfactual information presented in copy-paste'd complaint)?</p>

<p>As long as the document filed in court is factually accurate in the current case, the fact that it is copied from a document filed in a previous case is usually unobjectionable. Rule 11 notes various things that an attorney is certifying when a pleading is signed. Originality is not one of them.</p>

<p>It is far more serious in legal writing to claim that material is quoted when it is merely a paraphrase, than to quote without attribution. The former exaggerates the authority of a statement and makes a false statement of fact.</p>

<p>Unless there was something special about a pleading that implied that it was original when it was not, it would almost never be a problem. But, it would be very rare that this is the case.</p>

<p>As functional writing with common sources, it also wouldn't be easy to distinguish true copying from independent production of very similar content.</p>
