Prososki v. Regan

Prososki v. Regan, 321 Neb. 38 (Neb. 2026) (parallel cite 32 N.W.3d 593, as cited in later Nebraska authority), No. S-25-295, Nebraska Supreme Court, per curiam (Funke, C.J., and Cassel, Stacy, Papik, Freudenberg, and Bergevin, JJ.; Vaughn, J., not participating; Stacy, J., concurring), filed March 20, 2026. Appeal from the District Court for Douglas County (Judge Tressa M. Alioth). W. Gregory Lake, of Plains Legal Group, Omaha, represented the appellant, Jason C. Regan, in this dissolution (divorce) appeal; the appellee/cross-appellant, Jennifer M. Prososki, asserted the brief's citations were the product of generative AI. The Nebraska Attorney General appeared as amicus curiae. Primary opinion (official Nebraska Judicial Branch online library): https://www.nebraska.gov/apps-courts-epub/public/viewOpinion?docId=N00013081PUB ; Charlotin database entry (dated March 20, 2026): https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/ Provenance: backfill entry drafted October 21, 2026, outside the twice-weekly sweep, after primary-source verification from the official opinion and reconciliation against the Charlotin database (see (3) below). The matter was flagged as a library gap in the October 8, 2026 sweep notes. Inclusion note: the opinion is the library's first Nebraska Supreme Court entry and rests on a verified sanctions disposition (brief stricken, appeal dismissed, disciplinary referral); the April 2026 follow-on suspension is reported in the press only and is flagged as such wherever it appears below.

Lake filed Jason's appellate brief on July 31, 2025, signed and certified by him; a replacement brief filed the next day added a missing required section but changed nothing else. The brief, in the court's words, "contains numerous citations to fake cases, real cases with fake quotations, real cases with mischaracterized holdings, and Nebraska statutes and court rules with fake quotations." The court's opinion itemizes the damage in a 20-row chart of problematic authorities, including four fictitious cases: Kennedy v. Kennedy, 27 Neb. App. 510, 934 N.W.2d 57 (2019), a fake case built on the name of a real unpublished memorandum opinion, cited and quoted five times, with quotations and a holding that exist nowhere in Nebraska case law; Miller v. Miller, 227 Neb. 71, 416 N.W.2d 358 (1987); State on behalf of Ricardo P. v. Christina R., 309 Neb. 705, 962 N.W.2d 315 (2021); and State v. Stricklin, 29 Neb. App. 367, 904 N.W.2d 535 (2017). The chart also records fictitious quotations attributed to real cases (among them Bergmeier v. Bergmeier, Simons v. Simons, Parde v. Parde, Hotz v. Hotz, and Garza v. Garza), fictitious quotations from a real statute (Neb. Rev. Stat. § 43-2923) and from real court rules (Neb. Ct. R. §§ 4-204 and 4-215), incorrect citations, and real cases cited for propositions they do not support. (The figures in press coverage, 57 of 63 citations defective, per opposing counsel's count as reported by WOWT, are not figures the court adopted: the opinion gives no aggregate count, and its own chart itemizes 20 authorities. Do not present 57/63 as a court finding.) Jennifer moved on August 26, 2025, to strike the brief and dismiss the appeal. Lake made no attempt to address the brief's contents until that motion landed; he then filed two nearly identical motions for leave to file a corrected brief, stating the citations were "sloppy" due to "copying and pasting . . . from Westlaw without verifying the official reporter," and asserting that he "did not invent cases, did not rely on AI, and did not attempt to mislead the court." He attributed the errors to an extension of time granted only on the day the brief was due and to a "catastrophic screen crack" to his laptop on July 31, 2025, while traveling, which left him without a computer for 5 days. At oral argument he asserted he had attempted to file the "correct version" of the brief the day after its initial filing; the court noted there is no record of any such filing. Critically, the court did not find that AI was in fact used: it describes the material as "fictitious, potentially AI-generated," records that the AI assertion was Jennifer's, and holds that "[r]egardless of whether AI was used in the preparation of Jason's appellate brief, our analysis in this case is ultimately the same."

The court held the submission of fictitious authority "can be resolved by application of our existing rules of professional conduct and court rules," identifying potential violations of: Neb. Ct. R. of Prof. Cond. § 3-503.3(a)(1) (candor toward the tribunal, a lawyer shall not knowingly "make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made"); § 3-501.1 (competence, whose comment 6 includes keeping "abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology"); § 3-501.3 (diligence); § 3-503.1 (meritorious, nonfrivolous claims, "A fake opinion is not 'existing law'"); and § 3-508.4(c) (misconduct, conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation, for which "proof of actual intent to deceive or defraud is not required"; the inquiry focuses on the effect of the lawyer's conduct). On candor, the court held that "conscious avoidance" or "failing to adequately review a brief and verify that the law presented is good law" satisfies § 3-503.3's "knowingly" requirement, and that even if the initial submission was not knowing, Lake "failed to attempt to correct the false statements of law until after being made aware by Jennifer's motion to strike," and conceded the authority was not properly grounded "only after being pressed by questioning from the bench" at oral argument, together "a failure of his duty of candor toward this court." The court rejected his explanations: the Westlaw copy-paste account "could apply to a handful of citations where the reporter information is slightly off but cannot explain the numerous fictitious quotations . . . It also does not explain how a few cases appear to be made up entirely," and "[h]is assertion that he simply filed the wrong draft of the appellate brief lacks credibility." Sanction imposed by the opinion: exercising its inherent authority, the court ordered Jason's appellate brief stricken and his appeal dismissed, and referred Lake to the Counsel for Discipline of the Nebraska Supreme Court "to investigate the filing of Jason's appellate brief rife with fictitious and misrepresented authority." The court expressly left open Jennifer's right to file for an award of attorney fees; it imposed no monetary sanction itself. In fairness to the client, the court reviewed Jason's assignment of error for plain error and found none, and affirmed the dissolution decree on Jennifer's cross-appeal. Quotable passages: "Citing nonexistent case law or misrepresenting the holdings of a case is making a false statement to a court. It does not matter if [generative AI] told you so." And: "AI, like other technological tools, can be a benefit to the legal community, but it must be used with caution and humility. Anything less imperils the reputation of the legal profession and wastes time and resources of both the courts and litigants." Stacy, J., concurring, agreed the brief should be stricken and the referral made (and stressed the majority had not prejudged the scope or outcome of the disciplinary process), but would have affirmed rather than dismissed once plain-error review found no error. Press-reported follow-on (NOT verified from a primary document; flagged per library convention): WOWT (NBC Omaha) reported that in early April 2026 the Counsel for Discipline recommended Lake's temporary suspension and that, days before the court's order, Lake submitted an affidavit, for the first time, admitting he had used a generative AI tool to draft the brief and had not verified its citations, and calling his failure to be forthright with the court a "grave error of judgment." The court then filed a one-page order suspending Lake from the practice of law "until further notice," with a court-appointed referee to recommend the length of the suspension after a full disciplinary proceeding. WOWT characterizes this as a temporary suspension; secondary aggregators that describe a final "indefinite suspension" imposed April 15, 2026, overstate the record, the date itself is reported variously as April 15 or April 16, 2026, and as of October 21, 2026, no published final discipline opinion in the matter has been located (CourtListener and the Nebraska online library carry the Prososki opinion only). Charlotin reconciliation: Charlotin's database does carry this matter (case name "Prososki v. Regan," court "SC Nebraska," date March 20, 2026; party "Lawyer"; AI tool "Unidentified"; outcome "Appellant's brief stricken; appellant's appeal dismissed; Bar referral; Suspension"; no monetary penalty; professional sanction "Yes"), and his held source document is the same official opinion saved for this entry. Two discrepancies, with the primary document governing: (1) his outcome string folds "Suspension" into the opinion's disposition, but the opinion imposes no suspension, his own Details note concedes "[t]he suspension was later reported by local media"; (2) his hallucination itemization is a five-item sample of the court's 20-row chart. His date, court, and no-monetary-penalty fields match the primary record.

R5, Denied or Doubled Down (graded from the court opinion's own record: Lake denied inventing cases, denied AI use, and denied any intent to mislead in his corrected-brief motions and again at oral argument; offered explanations the court found not credible, including a "wrong draft" filing of which no record exists; made no attempt to correct the false statements until opposing counsel's motion to strike forced the issue; and conceded the authority was not properly grounded only after being pressed by questioning from the bench). Caveat: the April 2026 affidavit in which Lake first admitted AI use post-dates the opinion, is known only from press reporting (the affidavit and suspension order were not located), and came after the Counsel for Discipline had recommended his temporary suspension; it is recorded in (3) for completeness and does not alter the order-based grade.

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The court's own verification list is the checklist: "a simple search of Westlaw and LexisNexis legal databases, the Nebraska Revised Statutes, Nebraska Supreme Court rules, or the free Nebraska Appellate Courts Online Library" would have shown that the quotations did not exist, that Kennedy v. Kennedy is not a real case, and that the real cases' holdings did not match, before filing, not after. Verify quotations word-for-word against the opinion text and check statutes and rules in the official code, never in generated text; fictitious quotations from § 43-2923 and the court rules are as sanctionable as fake cases. The response failures compounded everything: Lake addressed nothing until opposing counsel moved to strike, then offered explanations (a cracked screen, a wrong draft that leaves no trace in the record, copy-paste sloppiness) that cannot account for invented quotations or wholly invented cases, and denied AI use in writing and again at oral argument, conceding the brief's defects only when pressed from the bench. The court's holding makes the source irrelevant, "It does not matter if [generative AI] told you so", so the only workable response to a fabrication flag is immediate verification, correction, and candor about how the filing was produced. A deadline extension granted late and a broken laptop are explanations for asking for more time, not for filing an unverified brief; and the client paid for the brief with his appeal, which was dismissed outright.

• Charlotin database entry (dated March 20, 2026): https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/
• nebraska.gov: https://www.nebraska.gov/apps-courts-epub/public/viewOpinion?docId=N00013081PUB