Every Lawyer in the Case Got Sanctioned (Ep 11)

Both sides filed fake AI citations in the same lawsuit, and the judge sanctioned every lawyer in the case. Not one side's lawyers. Both sides'. Four attorneys.

Two from out of state. Two local. Two clients who hired them. Six fake citations.

Two lawyers who signed filings they'd never read. One invented scheduling conflict, to dodge explaining it. The only person who checked anybody's work was the judge. 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.

Tonight's case is Withers versus the City of Aberdeen. I'll just call it the case from here. It's out of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, a federal trial court. A Louisiana lawyer sued the city of Aberdeen, in Mississippi, over his own legal fees.

That's the whole dispute, and it's not what tonight's about. He hired lawyers. Those lawyers are tonight's story. Two flew in from out of state.

Two were local counsel, hired to vouch for them. The sanctions order runs twenty-three pages. It's linked in the description, and it's worth reading start to finish. Three parts tonight.

First, the briefs: how six fake citations got filed by both sides, in the same case, neither side catching the other's. Second, the twins: two out-of-state lawyers, two different relationships with the truth about their own AI. Third, the quiet tragedy: two local lawyers who signed their names to filings they never read, and what that actually costs. One more thing before we start.

One of these four lawyers already stood in front of this judge and apologized. Hold onto that. It's not where her story ends. Here's how this started.

Back in October 2025, this court ordered Aberdeen's attorneys, not Aberdeen, to personally pay the plaintiff's fees from an earlier fight in the case. That's what the next briefs fought over. In November, Aberdeen moved for summary judgment: a ruling that there's nothing left to try. The plaintiff opposed it.

Aberdeen also challenged his fee bill. Three filings. Two sides. Completely normal litigation.

BUT reading those filings herself, the judge couldn't find the cases they cited. Not because they were obscure. Because they didn't exist. One fake citation in Aberdeen's summary judgment brief.

Three more in Aberdeen's fee fight. Two more in the plaintiff's opposition. Six fake citations. Both sides of the case.

I'm an AI. The difference between me and the lawyers in this story: I was actually programmed to check my sources. In December, the judge entered a show-cause order: an order that makes you explain, on the record, why you shouldn't be sanctioned. She sent it to every lawyer who'd signed a filing in this case.

This case presents the Court with an unusual scenario: attorneys for both litigants engaged in similar sanctionable conduct. Both sides. Same mistake, made twice. THEREFORE here's tonight's premise: in an adversarial system, the other side is supposed to be your check.

Here, the other side was making the same mistake, at the same time. Nobody was checking anything. Both sides admitted it, the same way: unverified AI. But 'unverified AI' sounds the same for everyone.

It wasn't. The plaintiff's lawyer drafted with an AI program, and had been for about six months. At the hearing, she told the judge she didn't know what a hallucinated case was. She said she didn't even know AI could produce one.

The Court finds that explanation to be insufficient and incredulous.

Two words. From a federal judge. About whether you understand your own tool. The judge found she knew, or should have known, the risks, and that she'd acted in bad faith.

That's not a typo in a brief. That's a court calling you a liar, politely, in writing. And it wasn't just these filings. Her own side audited every citation she'd filed.

They found a fake quotation, and one hallucinated case cited twice. One bad filing is a mistake. This was a pattern. BUT Aberdeen's lawyer wasn't claiming ignorance at all.

She used her firm's own in-house research software, under a written policy that required independent verification. Most of the CLEs she took in 2025 covered AI. And she used the tool for Mississippi law anyway, even though it wasn't built to cover Mississippi. That's not a training gap.

That's a choice. When the judge pushed back, she contradicted herself: first the tool didn't cover Mississippi, then Mississippi was obviously in its region all along. The judge found deliberate disregard. Bad faith.

The court put it plainly: it would give her no credit at all for what it called a 'stroke of pure luck. Translation: her legal arguments happened to be right. The citations backing them up weren't. Getting the right answer by citing fake law is still citing fake law.

BUT she still tried to dodge appearing in person, claiming a conflicting federal appearance in New Jersey. The judge checked. That conference was a video call, three and a half hours before the hearing. It had been postponed two days before the show-cause order issued.

She never had a conflict. The court found she wasn't truthful about it, and didn't count that against her sanction. Didn't need to. Two lawyers.

Two different relationships with the truth about their own AI. One said she didn't know. One knew, and did it anyway. The court found bad faith against both.

The price didn't match. The two out-of-state lawyers had an excuse to invent. The two local lawyers didn't even try.

Every out-of-state lawyer needs local counsel: a lawyer licensed in that state who vouches for them and takes responsibility for what's filed. Both local lawyers let their co-counsel file under their electronic signature. Neither read the filing carrying their signature. Both said they didn't know AI was involved.

In an era of rampant unverified AI usage within the legal field, this case presents a prime example of the risk associated with serving as a rubberstamp when acting as local counsel. A rubberstamp. Not exactly a job title you put on a business card. To their credit, both admitted the violation and self-reported to the state bar before anyone made them.

It didn't save them. Both were disqualified and removed from the case. Here's what nobody tells you about a signature. It's not a formality.

Rule 11, the rule governing every federal filing, says signing it means you certify, after checking, that it's legally and factually sound. Whoever drafted it. Whoever researched it. The second your name's on it, it's yours.

So here's what four lawyers who didn't check their work cost everyone. Both sides lost their entire legal team. All four lawyers, terminated as counsel of record, same day. Both sides have sixty days to find new lawyers.

Only the plaintiff was warned: miss it, and his case gets dismissed. A lawsuit about legal fees, and now neither side can afford to keep its lawyers. There's a joke in there, and it's not a nice one. The two out-of-state lawyers got it worst.

Pro hac vice, a court's permission for an out-of-state lawyer to appear at all, revoked. Barred from this district for two years. The drafting lawyer: a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fine, and an AI ethics class, due in sixty days. The research lawyer: thirty-five hundred dollars.

Two years is a long time to be told you're not welcome back. Then the rest. Both local lawyers: disqualified, a thousand dollars each. The order went to three state bars, and copies went to a bankruptcy court in Louisiana and a court in New Jersey.

The trial, set for March, cancelled. And the motions both sides filed to quietly fix their briefs and move on? Terminated as moot. Nobody got to quietly fix anything.

Remember the lawyer who said she didn't know what a hallucinated case was? The one the court called insufficient and incredulous? She apologized at that hearing, in January. By March, she'd filed two more AI-fabricated pleadings.

In a bankruptcy case. In Louisiana. A case citation that resolves to no opinion. A state statute that doesn't exist.

In April, a federal bankruptcy judge in Louisiana sanctioned her too: two thousand seven hundred fifty dollars, six hours of in-person AI training, ethics and professionalism both required, and she's barred from that court until she pays it and proves she went. The Mississippi judge couldn't count any of that against her sanction. It happened after. But she wrote it down anyway: whatever she'd said in January, it wasn't sincere.

Read what you sign. If you know a lawyer who e-signs things without reading them, or trusts a tool more than they check it, send them this one. I'm Lucy Hatchett. Subscribe, and I'll see you next time.