In re Sethi & Rounds
Episode 14
The case
The Ninth Circuit's first ruling on lawyers' responsibility for AI errors, and the source of two phrases that now run through the whole tracker: fake citations are not "typographical mistakes," and quietly fixing a filing without disclosing the fabrication is its own deception. The panel's holding is deliberately tool-neutral: "Attorneys do not need cutting-edge technology to fabricate citations and make demonstrably false and unsupported statements."
What happened
Mike Sethi and William Rounds filed Ninth Circuit briefs in an immigration case riddled with nonexistent cases. They blamed the errors on typographical mistakes and denied AI was responsible. Sethi additionally engaged in what the court called "subtle subterfuge": correcting a filing that contained hallucinated cases without disclosing that the cases had been fabricated.
The rule and the sanction
The duty of candor. Each lawyer received a formal reprimand and a $2,500 sanction, a six-month suspension from practicing before the Ninth Circuit, and a two-year forward-looking requirement to disclose in future filings whether generative AI was used and, if so, the name of the program. The court stressed that the source of the errors was ultimately irrelevant; the failure to own them was the violation.
How it could have been avoided
Do not relabel hallucinations as typographical mistakes; a typo cannot conjure a case that was never decided. If you correct a filing, disclose in the correction what was wrong and why. Silent fixes are treated as deception, and they cost more than the original error.
Watch the episode
This case is covered in Episode 14: Name the Source (watch on YouTube).