The Brief

A Los Angeles-area attorney must pay a $10,000 fine for filing a state court appeal full of fake quotations generated by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT.

The fine appears to be the largest issued over AI fabrications by a California court and came with a blistering opinion stating that 21 of 23 quotes from cases cited in the attorney’s opening brief were made up. It also noted that numerous out-of-state and federal courts have confronted attorneys for citing fake legal authority.

“We therefore publish this opinion as a warning,” it continued. “Simply stated, no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations— whether provided by generative AI or any other source—that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified.”

The opinion, issued 10 days ago in California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal, is a clear example of why the state’s legal authorities are scrambling to regulate the use of AI in the judiciary. The state’s Judicial Council two weeks ago issued guidelines requiring judges and court staff to either ban generative AI or adopt a generative AI use policy by Dec. 15. Meanwhile, the California Bar Association is considering whether to strengthen its code of conduct to account for various forms of AI following a request by the California Supreme Court last month.

The attorney fined last week, Amir Mostafavi, told the court that he did not read text generated by the AI model before submitting the appeal in July 2023, months after OpenAI marketed ChatGPT as capable of passing the bar exam. A three-judge panel fined him for filing a frivolous appeal, violating court rules, citing fake cases, and wasting the court’s time and the taxpayers money, according to the opinion.

Mostafavi told CalMatters he wrote the appeal and then used ChatGPT to try and improve it. He said that he didn’t know it would add case citations or make things up.

He thinks it is unrealistic to expect lawyers to stop using AI. It’s become an important tool just as online databases largely replaced law libraries and, until AI systems stop hallucinating fake information, he suggests lawyers who use AI to proceed with caution.

“In the meantime we’re going to have some victims, we’re going to have some damages, we’re going to have some wreckages,” he said. “I hope this example will help others not fall into the hole. I’m paying the price.”

The fine issued to Mostafavi is the most costly penalty issued to an attorney by a California state court and one of the highest fines ever issued over attorney use of AI, according to Damien Charlotin, who teaches a class on AI and the law at a business school in Paris. He tracks instances of attorneys citing fake cases, primarily in Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

In a widely-publicized case in May, a U.S. district court judge in California ordered two law firms to pay $31,100 in fees to defense counsel and the court for costs associated with using “bogus AI-generated research.” In that ruling, the judge described feeling misled, said they almost cited fake material in a judicial order and said “Strong deterrence is needed to make sure that attorneys don’t succumb to this easy shortcut.”

Charlotin thinks courts and the public should expect to see an exponential rise in these cases in the future. When he started tracking court filings involving AI and fake cases earlier this year, he encountered a few cases a month. Now he sees a few cases a day. Large language models confidently state falsehoods as facts, particularly when there are no supporting facts.

“The harder your legal argument is to make, the more the model will tend to hallucinate, because they will try to please you,” he said. “That’s where the confirmation bias kicks in.”

A May 2024 analysis by Stanford University’s RegLab found that although three out of four lawyers plan to use generative AI in their practice, some forms of AI generate hallucinations in one out of three queries. Detecting fake material cited in legal filings could get harder as models grow in size.

Another tracker of cases where lawyers cite nonexistent legal authority due to use of AI identifies 52 such cases in California and more than 600 nationwide. That amount is expected to increase in the near future because AI innovation is outpacing the education of attorneys, said Nicholas Sanctis, a law student at Capital University Law School in Ohio.

Jenny Wondracek, who leads the tracker project, said she expects this trend to get worse because she still regularly encounters lawyers who don’t know that AI makes things up or believe that legal tech tools can eliminate all fake or false material generated by language models.

“I think we’d see a reduction if (lawyers) just understood the basics of the technology,” she said.

Like Charlotin, she suspects there are more instances of made up cases generated by AI in state court filings than in federal courts, but a lack of standard filing methods makes it difficult to verify that. She said she encounters fake cases most often among overburdened attorneys or people who choose to represent themselves in family court.

She suspects the number of arguments filed by attorneys that use AI and cite fake cases will continue to go up, but added that not just attorneys engage in the practice. In recent weeks, she’s documented three instances of judges citing fake legal authority in their decisions.

As California considers how to treat generative AI and fake case citations, Wondracek said they can consider approaches taken by other states, such as temporary suspensions, requiring attorneys who get caught to take courses to better understand how to ethically use AI, or requiring them to teach law students how they can avoid making the same mistake.

Mark McKenna, codirector of the UCLA Institute of Technology, Law & Policy praised fines like the one against Mostafavi as punishing lawyers for “an abdication of your responsibility as a party representing someone.” He thinks the problem “will get worse before it gets better,” because there’s been a rush among law schools and private firms to adopt AI without thinking through the appropriate way to use them.

UCLA School of Law professor Andrew Selbst agrees, pointing out that clerks that work for judges are recent law school graduates, and students are getting bombarded with the message that they must use AI or get left behind. Educators and other professionals report feeling similar pressures.

“This is getting shoved down all our throats,” he said. “It’s being pushed in firms and schools and a lot of places and we have not yet grappled with the consequences of that.”

I love seeing all the thoughtful responses to the new LACMA Geffen Galleries that folks have shared with us — keep them coming. In the meantime, our arts team is answering your questions about the new museum addition, so if you have questions about it — anything from architectural history to how to get tickets — please send an email to bestthingstodo@laist.com.

If you’re not headed out to get your country (and more!) on at Stagecoach this weekend, Licorice Pizza has plenty of music picks this side of the desert. Friday concerts in town include Third Day at the Forum, Patrick Watson at the Belasco, the Cribs at Echoplex and Alice Phoebe Lou at the Wiltern. Saturday has Getdown Services at the Roxy, Coach Party at the Moroccan Lounge and Tom Petty cover band extraordinaire Petty Party at the James R. Armstrong Theatre in Torrance. Sunday has Traitrs at the Roxy, Gabriel Kahane at Sid The Cat and Bethel Music at the Wiltern. And finally, the West End Girl herself, Lily Allen, serves her sweet revenge at the Orpheum on Saturday and Sunday, while animated pop diva Hatsune Miku takes over the Peacock Theater.

Elsewhere on LAist, you can find out when tickets go on sale for the FIFA World Cup fan fest in L.A., give a clap for my favorite LAist headline of the week about the landslide that threatened Rancho Palos Verdes’ trails, and get tickets for Saturday’s Go Fact Yourself live with Meaghan Rath and Hrishikesh Hirway.

Events

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Saturday, April 25, 1:30 p.m.
Buena Vista Branch Library 
300 N. Buena Vista St., Burbank 
COST: FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED; MORE INFO 

Taylor Jenkins Reid will be in Burbank for National Library Week.

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Emma McIntyre

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Author Taylor Jenkins Reid — the prolific brain behind favorite modern novels like Daisy Jones and the Six, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and many more — joins fellow author Laura Warrell (Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm) at the Buena Vista Branch Library as part of Burbank’s celebration of National Library Week.

Permission Poetics Slam Poetry Workshop

Friday, April 24, 3 p.m.
Heavy Manners Library 
1200 N. Alvarado St., Echo Park
COST: $28; MORE INFO 

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Heavy Manners Library

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Eventbrite

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Ready to unleash the slam poet inside you? Join writer and performer Erin Taylor for this workshop to help craft and perform your first slam poem, using the given theme of “Reunion” as a guide. Snaps all around!

Muumuus and Mimosas

Sunday, April 26, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Santa Monica Blvd. between Doheny Drive and La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

Pride is just around the corner, but first find your best Mrs. Roper muumuu and sashay your way down to the Rainbow District (Santa Monica Boulevard between Doheny Drive and La Cienega Boulevard) for Muumuus and Mimosas. The City of West Hollywood hosts this afternoon of festive programming across the neighborhood’s various bars and restaurants, including brunch specials (natch), local vendors and more.

CicLAvia West LA 

Sunday. April 26, 9 a.m. 
Connecting Santa Monica Blvd. and Westwood Blvd.
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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Courtesy CicLAvia Los Angeles

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Get on your bikes and ride — this time through Westwood and West L.A. for a CicLAvia on the West Side. Check out the map before you go to make sure you hit up all the pop-ups along the three-mile route, including LAist's.

York Boulevard Road Concert

Sunday, April 26, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. 
York Boulevard, Highland Park 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

More than 40 site-specific performances, installations, music and interactive art will be featured along four miles of York Boulevard in Highland Park, all put together by The Road Concerts, and all free. Use any mode of transport that suits your fancy, see your neighbors and enjoy the art.

City of STEM 

Sunday, April 26, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
900 Exposition Park, South Lawn, Expo Park 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

Like a science fair on steroids, the annual City of STEM and Los Angeles Maker Faire is an all-ages event that brings together young scientists and inventors from across the county. It’s free to attend, so get out there and get inspired by these young minds at work.

Benita Bike’s DanceArt

Saturday and Sunday, April 25 to 26
Lineage Performing Arts Center 
920 E. Mountain Street, Pasadena 
COST: $40; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Benita Bike DanceArt

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Los Angeles’ five-member chamber modern dance company, Benita Bike’s DanceArt, celebrates its 45th season with a weekend of shows including work created from 2017 up through this year. Benita Bike’s DanceArt is known for creating original dance works for the stage and presenting those works both in concert settings as well as in unique “Explore Dance” programs produced at neighborhood sites.

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer: Burning in the eyes of the maker

Through Saturday, May 30 
Jeffrey Deitch 
7000 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

The art world sadly lost one of its young greats last week with the death of Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, whose work was provocative, detailed and incredibly timely. Her death at just 46 makes this exhibit at Jeffrey Deitch even more important to see; it’s on through May 30.

LA Yarn Crawl

Through Sunday, April 26
Various locations
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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Nynne Schrøder

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Calling all fiber arts enthusiasts! Stock up on yarns of all colors of the rainbow at participating L.A. Yarn Crawl stores. With discounts, prizes, free patterns and more, all you knitters out there will be in sweater heaven.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Filipinos often show their love with the simple question: “Kumain ka na?” — Tagalog for “Have you eaten yet?” This is another way of asking, “Are you being taken care of?”

Since the days of Little Manila in the 1920s, Filipino food in Los Angeles answered that question quietly, feeding a hard-working community without much recognition. But that’s changed in the past decade, according to Eli Simon, COO of the former ghost kitchen turned lauded restaurant Manila Inasal.

The past decade has been marked by the rise of a new class of eateries led by Filipino chefs honoring the soul of traditional Filipino cuisine with modern flair.

“What’s changed in recent years is a new generation of Filipino and Filipino-American chefs who are approaching the cuisine with more intention,” Simon told The LA Local. “They’re telling clearer stories, refining how dishes are presented and helping people see the full range of what Filipino food can be.”

In 2016, the late L.A. Times food critic Jonathan Gold noticed a “Pinoy cooking boom in Los Angeles.” It seemed that Filipino cuisine was in the zeitgeist on television with Chef Sheldon Simeon wowing viewers on Top Chef and in L.A. with Chad and Chase Valencia’s pop-up in Chinatown called Lasa, which Gold praised for a menu that “vibrates with the flavors of the Philippines.” 

What followed was a pandemic-era generation of Filipino chefs noticing an opportunity to launch something new. Home kitchens became James Beard Award-recognized restaurants. And a cuisine that had long fed its own community almost exclusively began to feed everyone else too.

What once was seen as “exotic” has now broken into the mainstream. Even Trader Joe’s has embraced Filipino food with a frozen adobo dinner and ube-flavored everything — while causing online debates on the culture’s commodification. 

A vibrant spread of Filipino staples at Manila Inasal, including grilled inasal chicken, garlic rice and an array of traditional side dishes.

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“Our food is for the Filipino American longing to connect with their roots,” Manila Inasal executive chef Natalia Moran told The LA Local. “It’s for the American who has never tried Filipino [food].”

The reasons Filipino food took longer to break through are complicated, according to Moran. She pointed to colonization — the Philippines was occupied by Spain, the United States and Japan — and the way that history shaped Filipinos’ own relationship to their culture. 

“We had the mentality that anything imported was better than locally made,” she said. “We Filipinos had to see the beauty in ourselves, in our own culture, before we could showcase our culture, our identity to the world.”

Now they are. There are nearly a half-million Filipinos in Los Angeles County — the largest concentration outside the Philippines — and their chefs are cooking with a confidence and creativity that feels long overdue.

Today, there are dozens of high-quality Filipino chefs and eateries all over L.A. County. The restaurants below represent a small slice of the vanguard of that movement. 

From decades-old neighborhood anchors to the new wave of chef-driven concepts, here’s a guide to some of the best Filipino spots across L.A. 

Kuya Lord

Lord Llera opened Kuya Lord out of his home during the pandemic, feeding neighbors before the concept grew into a James Beard Award-winning brick-and-mortar on Melrose. Llera told The LA Local he wants non-Filipinos to discover Filipino food and crave it like Chinese, Thai or Japanese cuisine.

“Because I am doing Southern Filipino cuisine, it’s also a way of educating fellow Filipinos about other Filipino regional dishes,” he said.

Representing the Quezon province in the Philippines, Chef Llera offers distinct flavors from the region that can even be new to Filipinos in Los Angeles, serving super-savory proteins like the popular fatty and rich lucenachon — a hybrid of lechon and porchetta — alongside pancit and garlic rice.

Manila Inasal

A signature dish, the crab tortang talong reimagines the classic Filipino eggplant omelet by topping it with succulent crab meat and bright roe.

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Courtesy Manila Inasal

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Manila Inasal began in the Philippines in 2020, when Chef Moran and her siblings cooked for first responders during the pandemic. It quickly grew into a restaurant in its namesake city before moving to Los Angeles in 2023.

“I love how vibrant and diverse the culinary scene is here in L.A.,” Moran said. “There are authentic spots that are amazing, but there are also places that offer a hip and new take on dishes.”

Being exposed to the diverse culinary landscape of Los Angeles has enabled Chef Moran to reimagine traditional Filipino dishes. 

“It has broadened my understanding of which flavors can and cannot go together [and] which Filipino flavors go with other items that can be found here,” Moran explained. “The Los Angeles culture has exposed me to a whole color palette I can now use to create something delicious and interesting.”

Manila Inasal, which loosely translates to “Manila Grill,” roots itself in the savory, salty and tangy flavor profiles of the Philippines. In addition to their take on laing focaccia, joy can be found in the crispy and fatty lechon sisig, while beef short rib adobo represents the homeland proudly. Veggie versions of both dishes are just as satisfying.

Chef Moran also ups the ante with the traditional tortang talong by topping a thick eggplant omelet with dollops of calamansi aioli, crab meat and tobiko.

Sampa

Blending Filipino and Mexican influences, the kare-kare tamales feature peanut-based flavors wrapped in traditional corn husks.

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Courtesy Sampa

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Filipino food has not traditionally been presented as “haute cuisine,” but restaurants like Sampa have subverted expectations, offering refined twists on tradition with a dash of swagger. 

Sampa — short for sampaguita, the national flower of the Philippines — took the long road to a permanent home. Chef Josh Espinosa and co-owner Jenny Valles launched as a delivery concept during the pandemic, staged pop-ups at the Pali Hotel in West Hollywood and Cafe Caravan in Los Feliz, and held a lunch residency at Kaviar before landing in downtown L.A.’s Arts District at the end of 2024.

Espinosa and Valles are constantly pushing the envelope when it comes to being bold and inventive with Filipino cuisine. The ever-changing Sampa brunch menu items include a chicken and pandan waffle, bangus benedict, and biscuits and longanisa gravy. Dinner brings octopus adobo, lamb kaldereta tortellini, crab fat fried rice and a plate of pancit topped with crispy duck. The kare kare tamales have become a standout.

A modern classic: Sampa’s longganisa spaghetti pairs the sweetness of Filipino sausage with a rich, savory sauce and floral garnishes.

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“I think what makes the Los Angeles Filipino food scene different is that this city is a hub for creatives — people constantly pushing ideas forward,” Espinosa told The LA Local. “Being surrounded by that energy naturally influences how we cook and create.”

Espinosa said he grew up embarrassed to bring Filipino food in Tupperware to school. Today he’s working to make the unfamiliar — including dishes like isaw, or chicken intestines — approachable without losing their soul. “My goal is to present these dishes in a way that feels familiar and accessible,” he said.

“Food is a love language in Filipino culture because, historically, many families in the Philippines do not have much, so cooking became a meaningful way to show love and appreciation with what you have,” Espinosa said. “At the end of the day, my goal is to tell my story as a Filipino American and to share that with the world.”

Valles said that Filipinos take great pride in family and tradition. “Food is a vessel that keeps memories alive.”

Mekeni Pinoy’s Pride

The draw at Mekeni Pinoy’s Pride is the buffet — a weekend breakfast spread and a Wednesday dinner service, both featuring around two dozen dishes and massive lines around the block. So reservations are highly recommended. 

The food is rooted in Pampanga, billed as the culinary capital of the Philippines. Show up on a weekday for à la carte service and order the oxtail kare-kare, pork belly adobo and the seafood sinigang. 

HiFi Kitchen

Pork Sisig from HiFi Kitchen features sizzling roast pork, finely chopped and tossed with onions, peppers and a house soy-vinaigrette, topped with fresh cabbage, chili oil and house crema.

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Erick Galindo

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HiFi Kitchen is a nod to both high fidelity audio and Historic Filipinotown — both loves of founder Justin Foronda. Chef Foronda was born and raised in the neighborhood and is a former b-boy, registered nurse and musician.

He told The LA Local that he’d grown frustrated that HiFi felt invisible compared to Little Tokyo or Koreatown, so he opened HiFi, installing a mural that declares: “This is Historic Filipinotown.” 

The menu reads, as Foronda calls it, “proudly Filipino Angeleno.” It features rice bowls, silogs, tacos built on tocino pastor and vegan riffs on classics like veggie sisig. His more recent creation — a stuffed pastry he calls a “Filipino puffy taco,” inspired by the bright orange empanadas of Ilocos — is as Filipino-Angeleno as it gets. 

L.A. Rose Café

Established by Lemuel Balagot in 1982, L.A. Rose Café is a longtime neighborhood anchor that feels, in the best possible way, like eating at your tita’s or aunt’s house.

For the last four decades, it has served a solid, consistently good menu of Filipino dishes. Portions are generous. The lechon — Cebuano-style roasted pig — and a pork kidney and intestine soup called dinuguan rival those of restaurants in the Philippines itself. It is also one of the best places in the city for traditional halo-halo, or shaved ice dessert.

San & Wolves

A typical allergen-free dish at San & Wolves.

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Isabella Kulkarni

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The LA Local

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San & Wolves is Filipino-owned vegan bakery in Long Beach doing what most places won’t bother to attempt: recreating the childhood classics — ube halaya, pandan pudding — without any dairy. 

Founders Kym Estrada and Arvin Torres started the bakery to maintain their vegan diet without giving up the flavors they grew up with, and the results speak for themselves. Worth the drive.

Kusina Filipina

Kusina Filipina is in a banquet space in Eagle Rock that has the atmosphere of a divey comedy club — but the food, not the vibes, is the real star. From menu staples like pancit and crunchy pork sisig drizzled with calamansi juice to larger dishes like chicken adobo and a super-crispy pata that smells like pounded peppercorns, the menu is full of hits.

Neri’s

Neri’s is a prime place for takeout, but even more popular for their kamayan — the communal, hands-on smorgasbord served on banana leaves. First opened in 1984 in Historic Filipinotown, Neri’s is now a small storefront in a Koreatown retail mall on the corner of Wilshire and Alexandria. 

Aside from nutty kare kare and golden-crusted crispy pata, Neri’s kamayan dinner — which requires 48-hour advance reservations — is gigantic feasts with a never-ending bed of rice and nearly a dozen dishes eaten by hand, with set menus that range from grilled pork belly and pork skewers to garlic shrimp and boneless bangus.

The Park’s Finest

A sampling of the Filipino BBQ from The Park’s Finest in Echo Park.

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Courtesy The Park’s Finest

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Park’s Finest started as backyard cookouts in Echo Park — the neighborhood that raised founder Johneric Concordia — before transitioning first into a catering company and now one of L.A.’s most popular BBQ joints. 

Concordia’s father, a Filipino American immigrant who served in the Navy, taught his sons the basics; the menu still honors that lineage, with the San Pablo pulled pork named for the family’s home province and Mama Leah’s coconut beef named after his grandmother.

The hot links are made with sweet Filipino sausage, the cornbread is mixed with rice flour and baked on a banana leaf, and the signature sauce is built on vinegar, garlic and chili — a direct nod to adobo. The coconut beef is the move: 16-hour smoked chuck stewed in coconut cream and fish sauce until it falls apart. 

Gerry’s Grill

Gerry’s Grill began as a single restaurant in Quezon City’s legendary culinary hub Tomas Morato. It has grown into an international franchise with multiple locations in Southern California, a spot in Qatar and one in Singapore — a city so serious about food it has hawker centers on the UNESCO heritage list.

The Artesia outpost makes a strong case for why. The menu hits all the classics — pork and bangus sisig, sinigang, lechon kawali, crispy pata — served in a room that gets loud and celebratory on weekend nights, with a live band included. 

The standout dishes are the grilled squid and the crispy kare-kare, and don’t skip the halo-halo.

Erick Galindo contributed to this report.

On a recent spring morning in Pacific Palisades, the clanging and hammering of construction filled the air. A small group of people gathered under a partially burnt Brisbane box tree shading the sidewalk on a street near the center of town.

The group took measurements — the leafiness of its crown, the width of its trunk. They inspected its bark for fungus and noted any new growth sprouting.

For more than a year, a group of researchers and students from UCLA, UC Davis, University of Florida and the U.S. Forest Service, alongside local volunteers and students, have collected data on more than 2,000 trees — about 600 in the Palisades and 1,500 in Altadena — to analyze how they may recover after the fires and their role in the fires’ spread.

The question about the fires' spread is key as California debates new regulations, called Zone Zero, near homes in high-risk fire areas. Their ongoing research is showing that in some cases, well-maintained vegetation may actually help buildings survive a fire.

The data will be some of the most extensive ever gathered to understand how the urban tree canopy fares in the face of increasingly catastrophic fires in an era of human-caused climate change.

Monitoring the health of post-fire trees

The team of researchers has been collecting data on trees in the Eaton and Palisades burn scars since just a few days after the fires started last year.

They’ve primarily focused on trees in the public right-of-way in areas with the highest number of tree species — that way they’ll be able to compare their data with tree canopy data from before the fires. The researchers have used in-person monitoring and remote sensing to survey the areas. A team from UC Davis has been collecting data using LiDAR.

“The purpose of our work is essentially to see how the trees have done,” said Edith de Guzman,  a cooperative extension specialist with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. “We want to understand how different species or different tree types fare.  And another aspect of the study is around flammability of trees and essentially doing a little bit of forensic work to understand what burnt what.”

Edith de Guzman (left) assists an undergraduate student measuring a fire-scarred tree in Pacific Palisades.

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Erin Stone

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The group stops at a jacaranda tree a little further up the street from the Brisbane box. Part of the crown is blooming purple, but fungus grows on its trunk.

“It's flowering, which is good. It's demonstrating that it still has enough energy to do that,” de Guzman said. “But we really don't see any growth that's happening from the fine branches and fine twigs at the end. So this tree's not doing super well.”

The bark is blackened on the side of the trunk closer to where a house once stood. The bark on the street side is lighter — some sprouts reach out from the trunk.

It’s a common pattern, de Guzman said.

“ The pattern that we see again and again is that the tree caught fire from the structure rather than the other way around,” she said.

Though they’ve only done preliminary analysis, de Guzman said that so far, they’re finding mature trees, no matter the species, tended to survive the flames better. And that most of the surviving trees they’ve surveyed actually grew in the last year.

“We are seeing that by and large, many trees are coming back and we just need to give them a chance,” said de Guzman. “They might be a little unsightly, they might not look exactly like they did before the fires, but they want to live, most of them. And we have quite a lot of species, both native and non-native, that are coming back.”

What the research says so far

Most research on wildfires, tree canopy and fire spread has come from rural, forested areas, said Francisco Escobedo, a research scientist with the Forest Service who has studied the issue for more than six years in areas such as Santa Rosa and Paradise.

“When we have these urbanized, highly populated, densely built environments that are affected by fire, we know very little about what happens to trees,” Escobedo said. “A lot of these trees, unlike the trees we have in our surrounding forests, didn't evolve with fires. What happens to jacarandas, what happens to magnolias, what happens to coast live oaks in urban environments?”

A tree in Pacific Palisades that appears to have suffered the most on the side where a house once stood.

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His research in more urban areas affected by fire is painting an increasingly nuanced picture. One recent study remotely measured some 16,000 buildings, as well as surrounding vegetation moisture, in Paradise in Northern California after the 2018 Camp Fire and Ventura after the 2017 Thomas fire. They found that drier vegetation near buildings in both areas was associated with building loss. But in Ventura, buildings near trees that were not water-stressed actually had a better chance of survival.

“ So the greener the trees were, the higher the influence of that vegetation on the building surviving,” Escobedo said.

The reasoning is still being parsed out, but Escobedo said they suspect it’s in part due to variations in types of vegetation and how the fires spread in each area. In both areas, embers largely drove building-to-building fire spread, though the intensity of the fire front and the nature of the vegetation were different — largely conifer forest up north, versus chaparral, shrub greenery here in Southern California.

While houses burned around them, many trees were able to withstand the flames, as shown by this aerial view of Altadena from June 2025.

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Myung J. Chun

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Escobedo says that’s why hardening homes and location-specific vegetation recommendations are key, rather than blanket policy recommendations. He added that the latest iteration of Zone Zero proposed regulations embraces more of this nuance.

“These neighborhoods are just very different from wildland conditions,” Escobedo said. “This home ignition zone, defensible space buffer concept we have was developed in wildland areas.”

“ If vegetation gets dry enough, hot enough, it's going to burn,” he added. “From what we've learned with home-hardening practices, there are things you can do to your home to reduce that ignitability. So what we think our research might be leading to is that there are things you can do with your vegetation to reduce that probability of ignition.”

Another aspect of the research will focus on how different species of trees responded to the fires, which will provide another helpful data point for policies and insurance protections, said Alessandro Ossola, an associate professor in urban plant science at UC Davis, who has led the LiDAR sensing aspect of the data collection.

“ We can plant, strategically, trees of the right species to withstand climate change but still provide benefits to the community and people that need trees so much,” he said.

Many trees in burn scar areas are resprouting in unusual ways, like this one in Pacific Palisades. The odd growth patterns can be a sign of stress and recovery.

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A symbol of resilience, data to inform policy

The researchers also hope their work will inform better protections for urban forests before and after future fires. For many survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires, the loss of their neighborhood trees since debris removal and, lately, ongoing construction has been yet another gut punch on top of the loss of their communities.

Already about 20% of their survey trees have been cut down since last year’s fires, de Guzman said. And as summer heat arrives, many of the remaining surviving trees will need help to make it through.

“What we're seeing is that removals are happening illegally,” she said. “ There are removals that are happening potentially by developers or their contractors despite the fact that the tree is not a high-risk tree and despite the fact that the tree is trying to bounce back.

“ So a lot of the trees should just be monitored at this point, not removed.”

Another recent Forest Service study found that the urban tree canopy recovered to pre-fire levels in Ventura and Santa Rosa within five years. However, the forest canopy declined overall in forested areas near Paradise — another indication of how different ecosystems respond in different ways to fire.

UCLA graduate student Matthew Murphy measures growth on the crown of a tree.

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“How can we ensure that we can continue to live with nature in ways that are protective, both of our built environment and of the softer, greener things that make it livable and inviting?” said de Guzman.

While many questions remain, in many ways, the research is not just rooted in the physical realm, she said.

“These trees were witnesses to an inferno — some firefighters tell that temperatures reached 2,000 degrees and more — and yet here they are,” de Guzman said. “These neighborhoods are going to change completely. … But we have an opportunity to maintain some of the witnesses that are here to tell the story of the before times.”

For Inglewood-born brothers Aaron and Lawrence Shaw, jazz is truly a family affair.

The brothers, who perform together as the Black Nile, have been nominated for Grammys and played with a roster of musicians – Lawrence has played for John Legend, Booker T. and the M.G.’s and Aminé, while Aaron’s performed alongside Herbie Hancock and Tyler, The Creator, and even gave OutKast’s André 3000 flute lessons.

The brothers were artists in residence last year at Boston’s Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and holed up in the Berkshire Mountains to write much of their new album “Indigo Garden,” but Lawrence said if anything, he was surprised at how the wealth inequality in different parts of Massachusetts reminded him of home.

“ L.A. is still in us, even though we're in Boston creating this,” Lawrence said.

Aaron, who plays saxophone and handles many of the melodic elements, said it’s a big relief to have the Black Nile’s new album out in the world.

“It's kind of akin to when you have your middle school pictures as your profile picture and you're however old you are now,” Aaron said. “Or if you open your old passport book, you're like, ‘damn, this is not an accurate representation of me,’ you know? So I feel like this is a better snapshot of us.”

On their roots in South Central’s jazz scene

Both Aaron and Lawrence grew up going to jazz rehearsals and camps all over South L.A., which even directly informed some of the songs on “Indigo Garden.”

Lawrence said the song “Slauson Fog” has a direct inspiration from that time in his life: “Taking my big, giant, upright bass down the 108 bus down Slauson from the 110 all the way to the West Side at 5:00 p.m. in the middle of rush hour traffic.”

“People are looking at me on the bus, like, who the f— is this guy? What's going on?” Lawrence added. “I'm on the 108 public metro bus taking an instrument they've never even probably seen in textbooks, don't even know it exists.”

When comparing the jazz the brothers were learning about to the music they’d hear around L.A., the brothers say their education on jazz, blues and the history of music made them connect with the music they were hearing on a deeper level.

“I'm fortunate enough to be able to say that, because a lot of people that I went to school with didn't really have a lot going on outside of school as far as it relates to experiences around music, in music, off the stage, on the stage, all those things,” Lawrence said.

You can hear that mix of past and present in the Black Nile’s music – you’ll hear standard jazz lines and chord changes, but also synths and production that move the songs forward.

Aaron (left) and Lawrence Shaw make up the top and low end of the Black Nile, respectively.

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Courtesy Myron Rogan

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L.A. as a city of improvisation

To Lawrence, the spirit of jazz is in and around L.A., whether people recognize it or not.

“We all have to improvise. We all have multiple jobs,” he said. “I don't know a single friend that just does one thing.”

The brothers see a throughline between greats like Miles Davis and John Coltrane, who responded in real time when they experienced racism, and Nipsey Hussle’s entrepreneurship and community-based activism. The common thread, he said, was that “they had no choice but to connect music to life.”

“I think Nipsey was the representation of purpose in action,” Lawrence said. “It was, ‘Okay, I'm a rapper. Alright, well, everybody raps. What makes me different?’ Well, it's the message, it's the story, it's the language, it's the movement.”

The Black Nile brings their new album to the stage on Saturday, April 26.

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Courtesy Myron Rogan

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On the preservation of jazz in South Central

The Shaw brothers consider themselves lucky to have spent so much time learning jazz. But many of the community programs they grew up going to have since lost funding and are no longer operating.

To add to that, some of the people who would have served as mentors to a new generation have died – so the brothers now see it as their turn to keep the music going.

“We need more jazz clubs in South Central, and we need more jazz music going on in South Central,” Aaron said. “That's part of our mission, because we need to elevate the experience for our people.”

To hear the Black Nile perform

The brothers will hit the stage April 26 at 2220 Arts + Archives with a full band to celebrate the release of ‘Indigo Garden.’

Tickets are available here.