Very cool, if true

Negligence can certainly trigger criminal liability in some situations. Driving without due care and attention or recklessly discharing firearms for example.

I think there is a question here about the interaction of signing the paperwork to submit the pleadings to court, which is a deliberate act of saying I [believe / know / understand / swear] that these things are true and the utter carelessness with which they have gone about checking the cases are correct. If you say "these things are true" and the only reason you believe that is that you have put less than zero effort in to reviewing the truth of your own statement when you could have have you in fact deliberately lied?

Also, worth noting that just because the lawyers' defence lawyer says that there needs to be a deliberate lie to trigger a sanction doesn't mean he's correct.