Case D-9 · AI Sanctions Case Tracker

Withers v. City of Aberdeen

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, No. 1:24-cv-218, sanctions order filed June 8, 2026 (Senior Judge Sharion Aycock)

Repeat offender (verified in the record) Episode 11

The case

Both sides. Withers is the first federal case in which a court sanctioned opposing counsel simultaneously for the same AI-misuse conduct: the plaintiff's lawyer, the defense lawyer, and both local counsel all drew sanctions out of one contract dispute. It is also the case that put two judicial findings on the record that now follow every lawyer in the tracker: claiming not to know what a hallucinated case is, is "insufficient and incredulous" in 2026, and violating your own firm's AI policy is evidence of bad faith.

What happened

Plaintiff's counsel Kathleen Wilson used an AI drafting platform, First Drafts, and filed an opposition containing two citations to nonexistent cases; at the hearing she said she had not known AI could hallucinate citations. Defense counsel Kathryn Williams used her firm's in-house AI tool without verifying its citations, against her own firm's written policy requiring independent verification, and the court found she misrepresented her availability to avoid the show-cause hearing. Local counsel on both sides sponsored the filings without reviewing them.

The rule and the sanction

Rule 11 and Local Rule 83.1. Wilson: pro hac vice admission revoked, barred from the Northern District of Mississippi for two years, a $2,500 fine, and an AI-ethics CLE within 60 days. Williams: barred for two years and fined $3,500 for blind reliance. The two local counsel: disqualified from the case and fined $1,000 each as rubber stamps. The scheduled trial was cancelled.

How it could have been avoided

Take the AI-competence CLE before you use the tools, not as a court-ordered remedy. Follow your own firm's policy, because the court will read it. And local counsel: a sponsorship signature is a verification duty. Lending your name without review is its own sanction.

Watch the episode

This case is covered in Episode 11: Every Lawyer in the Case Got Sanctioned (Ep 11) (watch on YouTube).