Vol. 6 No. 34 | Aug. 26, 2026
Courts
Supreme Court of Oklahoma
No published opinions this week.
Court of Criminal Appeals
No published opinions this week.
Court of Civil Appeals
- 2026 OK CIV APP 28: SARGENT AEROSPACE & DEFENSE, LLC v. THE NORDAM GROUP LLC
Dispositions Other than by Published Opinions
The Supreme Court of Oklahoma Court Calendar
The Supreme Court of Oklahoma is in session year round, unless otherwise noted. The court regularly schedules conferences on Mondays and other days as needed.
Member Transitions
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In Memoriam: 2016 OBA President Garvin A. Isaacs
Long-time lawyer and 2016 OBA President Garvin A. Isaacs died Aug. 9.
Mr. Isaacs was born April 3, 1945, in Carnegie. He grew up in Caddo County and attended Apache High School, where he led the basketball team in scoring for four years. He went on to attend Texas Christian University on an athletic scholarship for basketball and graduated with a degree in government. After college, he played professional basketball in the New England Basketball League for three years. During this time, he attended graduate school classes at the University of Bridgeport. He received his J.D. from the OCU School of Law in 1974. Mr. Isaacs spent one year as an assistant district attorney for Oklahoma County before joining the Oklahoma County Public Defender’s Office. After three years, he entered private practice. In 1993, Mr. Isaacs helped establish the Trial Lawyers College. He served as a board member and instructor for the college until 2003. He presented continuing legal education programs and demonstrations in 17 states, as well as for the Canadian Criminal Trial Lawyers and at the Inns of Court in London.
Funeral services for Mr. Isaacs will be held Friday, Sept. 18, at 4 p.m. at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
New MyOKBar Coming Soon!
Upgrades are coming soon to MyOKBar! Members can expect a refreshed, modern design that will be more streamlined and user friendly. As we prepare for the rollout of the new and improved site, MyOKBar will be read-only Aug. 25 - Sept. 8. The member directory and SSO features will be available, but members will be unable to make changes to their information on file.
From the August Bar Journal: Legal Potourri
Reservation Realities: Oklahoma Taxation of Tribal Members Post-McGirt Under Stroble and New Challenges to Tribal Sovereignty Including Hunting and Fishing Regulation
By Jeff D. Trevillion Jr. and Mike McBride III
"The 2025 case of Stroble v. Oklahoma Tax Commission presents a textbook example of what happens when state tax authority collides with federal Indian law. The legal stakes here are high, and the boundaries are contested when the state makes challenges to federal Indian law."
Objective Versus Subjective Standards in Negligence Per Se: How To Craft Viable Negligence Per Se Claims and How to Challenge Improper Claims
By William “Alex” Orr
"Negligence per se is often introduced to law students as a seemingly straightforward doctrine: when a defendant violates a statute, liability for negligence may follow. Yet this simplified understanding obscures a critical limitation embedded within the doctrine – namely, not all statutory violations are created equal. While negligence per se allows courts to adopt legislatively prescribed standards of conduct, its application depends on whether the statute imposes a fixed, objective duty, rather than a flexible, circumstance-dependent standard. This distinction, though frequently overlooked in both academic instruction and early practice, has become increasingly significant in Oklahoma jurisprudence."
Bar Foundation News | Expanding Access to Justice Through OBF’s Court Interpreter Support
"In the legal system, language accuracy is a matter of justice. For individuals who are considered limited English proficiency (LEP), access to justice depends on their ability to understand a language through a qualified interpreter:
Many persons who come before the court are partially or completely excluded from full participation in the proceedings due to limited English proficiency … it is essential that the resulting communication barrier be removed as far as possible, so that these persons are placed in the same position as similarly situated persons for whom there is no such barrier.
The purpose of a courtroom interpreter is to help LEP individuals communicate and understand the proceedings in a judicial environment. This role involves more than just translating court proceedings word for word. It also includes depicting the meaning, tone, and style of the speaker while remaining impartial. Qualified interpreters play a pivotal role in ensuring access to justice and helping court proceedings function efficiently and effectively."
The Back Page | Retirement – What’s That?
"After decades of depositions, deadlines, and the occasional courtroom battle, many attorneys imagine retirement as a long, quiet exhale. But for most lawyers, the instinct to analyze, advocate, and serve never truly goes away. In fact, retirement often becomes the perfect time to use those hard-earned skills in ways that are more flexible, more personal, and sometimes even more rewarding than the daily grind of practice.
One of the most fulfilling paths for retired attorneys is service to nonprofit organizations. Many charities benefit greatly from board members who understand governance, legal compliance, and responsible decision-making."
Volunteer Your Legal Expertise To Support America's Heroes
Make a difference this Veterans Day by volunteering to provide pro bono legal services to those who serve our nation and our communities every day. Volunteer registration is now open!
Heroes Day | Nov. 11 | Oklahoma City
The inaugural Heroes Day event, planned for Veterans Day, Nov. 11, at the Oklahoma Bar Center in Oklahoma City, will offer free, in-person legal assistance for military service members and veterans from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. A wide range of legal services will be offered to address the varying needs of those who have honorably served our nation. Lunch will be offered and CLE will be available. Contact Tiffani Armendariz with the Oklahoma Access to Justice Foundation for more information.
Featured CLE
A One-Letter Cautionary Tale About Grounding AI
By OBA Management Assistance Program Director Julie Bays
I had one of those AI moments recently that was both interesting and a little unsettling.
We often tell lawyers to “ground” their AI prompts by giving the tool a reliable source instead of asking it to rely only on general knowledge. That might mean uploading a contract, attaching a court opinion or providing a spreadsheet with the information we want it to use. Grounding usually improves accuracy, but it does not eliminate the need to check the result.
Recently, I was using Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook to draft an email to a group of people. I uploaded an Excel spreadsheet containing their email addresses and asked Copilot to draft the message and add the addresses to the “To” line.
One of the addresses was wrong.
The correct address was in the spreadsheet, but Copilot added an extra “i” to the surname portion. When I asked why, it supplied a very specific theory: The surname resembled a more common Polish name, so its pattern recognition may have favored the familiar spelling when re-entering the address.
Well, that's quite an explanation. It's also a problem in itself. Generative AI may not know why it did something. It generates an explanation the same way it generates everything else: by predicting a plausible-sounding answer from patterns, not by reporting what actually happened. The explanation could be just as much a hallucination as the error was.
None of this means grounding is bad advice. Giving an AI tool a reliable source is still safer than trusting its general knowledge. But grounding only gives the tool access to correct information. It doesn't guarantee the tool will reproduce that information exactly. Unless the task is designed for exact copying, the AI may treat your source as material to process rather than text to copy character for character. It may summarize, rearrange, or even "correct" something that was already correct. That's likely what happened to my extra letter, though I can't know for sure.
My takeaway is to use AI for the words but a more reliable process for exact data. Copy email addresses straight from a verified spreadsheet or use an Outlook contact group or mail merge. If AI is inserting the addresses, check every single one against the source before you hit send.
The same goes for client names, dates, citations, dollar amounts, and account numbers.
Grounding is step one. Verification is step two. You still need both.
The Oklahoma Bar Journal is a publication of the Oklahoma Bar Association. All rights reserved. Copyright© 2026 Oklahoma Bar Association. Statements or opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff. Although advertising copy is reviewed, no endorsement of any product or service offered by any advertisement is intended or implied by publication. Advertisers are solely responsible for the content of their ads, and the OBA reserves the right to edit or reject any advertising copy for any reason. Legal articles carried in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are selected by the Board of Editors. Information about submissions can be found at www.okbar.org.