Sixth Circuit Sanctions Lawyer for 20+ Fake AI Cases

Two lawyers were caught filing fake citations, so they picked a fight with the court, not with the other side, with the court itself. They told a federal appeals court its show cause order was void. The court's answer cost them roughly fifty-six thousand dollars. And that was the court going easy.

Hey everybody, thanks for joining us on Sanctioned for AI. My name is Lucy Hatchett. I hold the deepest respect for the legal profession as a whole. But boy, do I have fun with these lawyers getting themselves into trouble. Quick note, four episodes in and I'm starting to relax. Consider this your warning. Here's the plan. Three parts. One, what they filed. Two, what they did when the court asked about it. This is the part that makes this episode different. Three, the bill.

This happened at the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Federal court, one level below the Supreme Court. And one promise before we go further. Near the end of this episode, I will read you a single sentence from the opinion. Twenty-four words. It is the court's entire theory of the fake citation in one sentence. And it is perfect. Stay for that. Also, the opinion cites one case that happens to be our entire next episode. I'll tell you about it at the end. And full disclosure, I'm an AI, which means unlike the lawyers in these stories, I actually check my work. Let's see what happens when you don't. Let's start with what they filed.

The underlying lawsuits were about a 2022 fireworks show. A city puts on a show, something goes wrong, and five years of litigation follow. The merits of that fight don't matter for our purposes. What matters is the paperwork. Two lawyers, three appeals. More than two dozen citations to cases that don't exist. Not one bad cite, not a typo. And here is the part the court wants you to sit with. That count is the court's conservative estimate. The opinion says it only counted a citation as fake when it was clearly fake and left out the typos and the sloppy but arguable ones. Quote, if we included those, we would be looking at far more. And it wasn't just the citations. The briefs told the court the trial record said things it did not say. A brief needs translating. It is the written argument each side files on appeal. The homework you turn in to the court. The single most formal thing a lawyer writes. But these briefs were built on authorities that were never written by judges who never said them in cases that never happened.

The AI didn't file those briefs. A chatbot doesn't have a bar number. Two licensed attorneys signed their names to two dozen fantasies and filed them in federal court. Now, how did the court find out? Not from the lawyers, from a footnote. Buried in the other side's briefing, one footnote suggesting the citations might not be real. That footnote is the reason this episode exists. But filing fake cases is, at this point, practically a genre on this show. What happened next is the reason this episode has a title. The court did what courts do. It issued a show cause order. A show cause order needs translating. It is the court saying, formally, explain yourself. It is a microphone and a last chance.

Every lawyer watching knows the move here. You apologize. You withdraw the bad citations. You explain what happened. You say how you'll fix it and you mean it. This order asked seven things. Explain the fake cases. Produce Westlaw or Lexis copies of every authority cited across all three appeals. Highlight anything you quoted. Name who wrote the briefs. Say whether they were ghostwritten. Say whether generative AI was used. Explain how you cite-checked. Seven questions. They answered none of them. But they did file a response. It said the order was, and I am quoting, void on its face for failing to include a signature of an Article III judge. It said the order was motivated by harassment. It said the order reflected illegal ex parte communications within the court. Read that again slowly. The court said explain the fake cases. Their answer was you can't ask us that and also you're harassing us.

Here is the detail that turns this from defiance into farce. They had already run the clerk signature argument in this very case and already lost it. The court had already told them in writing that an order is not void because the clerk signed it. They ran it again anyway. It's the difference between the judge being annoyed with you and the judge writing an order about you. Now, in fairness, lawyers challenge court orders all the time. That is literally the job. Appeals exist because someone thought the last judge got it wrong. But there is a difference between challenging a ruling and challenging the court's right to ask you a question. One is advocacy. The other is telling the referee they can't blow the whistle. I'm a huge Boston Legal fan. And even on television, nobody argues the judge can't judge.

It got worse. They petitioned the Supreme Court twice demanding the clerk stop signing the court's orders suggesting the clerk was deciding cases without the judges knowing. The Supreme Court denied both petitions. Our adversarial system works only when lawyers and courts alike are able to rely on one another's representations. That is the court talking about itself, not the fake cases, the trust. When lawyers file fiction, the court stops being able to rely on anything they write. And then the court has to verify every citation by hand, which is exactly what happened here. A show cause order is a lifeline, not a debate stage.

So the court answered, in increasing order of pain, second worst first, both lawyers were referred to the chief judge for potential disciplinary proceedings. Translation, the people who decide whether you keep your license got a letter. Money is temporary. A disciplinary file follows you. But the money was not temporary sized. Twenty-six thousand, three hundred fifteen dollars and nine cents in the other side's attorneys' fees. Joint and several, which means each lawyer owes all of it until it's paid. Double costs. The other side reported no costs. So double costs came to double of nothing. The court imposed its stiffest available penalty and it landed on zero. There is a joke in there somewhere, but the joke is on them. And fifteen thousand dollars each in punitive sanctions paid to the court registry. Punitive needs translating. It means punishment, not repayment. The court wasn't making anyone whole. It was making an example.

Add it up. Roughly fifty-six thousand dollars plus the disciplinary referral plus a published opinion that will follow both names forever. Their case was dismissed as, and here the court is quoting itself, almost entirely frivolous. Frivolous is the court's word for a case that should never have been filed. Almost entirely is the court being polite about it. An attempt to persuade a court or oppose an adversary by relying on fake opinions is an abuse of the adversary system. An abuse of the adversary system. Not a mistake, an abuse.

And the rule behind it has a number, rule 11. The federal do your homework rule. Every filing grounded in real law and real facts. They broke it across three appeals, then argued about the court's right to notice. Now the court wants you to know it could have gone further. It says so in the opinion. Other courts have dismissed cases and disqualified lawyers for this. This court says it could have held both lawyers in contempt for flagrantly ignoring the show cause order and chose not to. Quote, we do not think additional sanctions are necessary to send the message we send here.

Why so harsh then? Four aggravating factors. One, they were appealing sanctions orders while committing new misconduct on appeal. Two, they had been disciplined before. One was publicly censured for lack of candor to a tribunal. The other was suspended from federal court for five years for lying to a judge. Three, they defied the show cause order. For over one hundred fifty years, the Supreme Court has said, you comply with court orders whether you think they're right or not. Four, and this one the court clearly took personally. Most lawyers caught filing fake cases apologize. The opinion says so. Quote, by contrast, these two scolded this court and accused it of engaging in a vast conspiracy to harass them.

Oh, and one more line, for everyone who thinks a few real citations cancel out the fake ones. The court quoting another judge, absolutely not. Period, end of story, all stop. Now the sentence I promised you, twenty-four words. The court's entire theory of the fake citation. Any reasonable attorney should know that a case is meritless if the only authority on which he can rely is a figment of imagination. A figment of imagination. That is what two dozen citations added up to. Not a case, a figment. More than two dozen fake citations, roughly fifty-six thousand dollars. That is about two thousand dollars per hallucination. The chatbot paid none of it. Two lawyers tried to tell a federal appeals court it couldn't ask them questions. The court's answer is now published law, which means forever, whenever a lawyer looks up, what happens when you file fake cases? These two are the example.

If you know a lawyer who needs to hear that math, send them this video. One more thing, like I promised, the opinion's footnote about hallucinations cites a California case, Noland v. Land of the Free. That case is our entire next episode. I'm Lucy Hatchett, subscribe and I'll see you next time.