The Price List

Fifteen cases that don't exist. Eight made-up quotations. This federal court in Oregon put a price on every one. Five hundred dollars a fake case.

A thousand dollars a fake quotation. Add the other side's legal fees, and the total comes to one hundred ten thousand, two hundred four dollars, and thirty-eight cents. And the family bringing the case lost their case for good, over fake law and a pile of broken court rules. 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.

The case is Couvrette versus Wisnovsky, out of a federal trial court in Oregon. The court wrote two orders about it, and I'm linking both in the description. They're worth reading yourself, so go check my work. The sanctions turn on Rule 11.

That's the federal rule that turns a lawyer's signature into a promise to the court that the attorney has done the checking the rule requires, that the law in it is real, and that the facts have support. In plain English, sign it, and you own every cite in it. Among a growing pile of AI sanctions cases, the court called this one "a notorious outlier in both degree and volume." Courts don't talk like that unless they mean it. First, how three briefs piled up fake law, the correction the lawyers filed once they were caught, and the one explanation they offered for it.

Pay attention to what was actually in it. Then, the court's price list, and everything stacked on top of it. And last, the two lawyers on the plaintiffs' side, because one of them, by his own account, barely looked at the briefs. Also, the fine at the center of all this has a status nobody expected.

Fifteen fake cases took three briefs and three months.

Adult siblings are fighting over the family winery, and the plaintiffs include their mother's estate. The plaintiffs' lead counsel was a California lawyer admitted pro hac vice: a visiting pass for out-of-state lawyers. That pass needs an Oregon lawyer to sponsor it: local counsel. In December 2024, the judge warned that more rule violations could end the case.

January 2025: a motion for summary judgment, which asks the judge to decide the case without a trial. It cited two cases that don't exist. April 2025: a response brief. Seven more.

The defense flagged the first two in writing that same day, suggesting they were "perhaps hallucinated by artificial intelligence." Three weeks later, lead counsel filed an errata, asking the court to ignore two sentences "included by mistake." Both harmless. Neither touched the fake cases. But a week after that errata came a reply brief: six more fake cases, fifteen in all, plus eight fabricated quotations. If someone tells you in writing your cases are fake, the next move isn't another brief.

But the warnings did nothing, so the defense served a Rule 11 motion.

Rule 11 has a grace period, the safe harbor: fix the problem within twenty-one days of being served, and the motion can never be filed. The defense demanded that the plaintiffs withdraw the briefs, agree to a dismissal, and pay the fees. Local counsel answered by asking to withdraw from the case, and the court let him go. Lead counsel answered in a single paragraph that said no, and that if the defense actually filed the motion, the plaintiffs would respond with an errata.

The court's verdict: Plaintiffs cannot seek refuge in the harbor that lead counsel abandoned. Five days after that letter, the corrections arrived. The errata pulled the first brief's two fake cases, "inadvertently included," and changed nothing else. Find a fake case in your brief?

Own it in writing, or quietly fix the PDF? In this Oregon federal court, one lawyer fixed the PDF. He deleted the fake cases, left the invented law standing, and in one spot deleted only the quotation marks. The sentence, credited to the Restatement (Second) of Contracts: Recitals of fact or intent in a written contract are not promises and do not impose duties.

The real passage says something else entirely. The judge, in the order that ended the case over fake law and broken court rules, wrote: Rather than a correction, lead counsel attempted a coverup. He failed at both. A correction that conceals isn't a cure.

It's a second problem. Fake law needs an explanation.

There was exactly one. A response filed in May 2025 called the fakes "inadvertent and the result of reliance on an automated legal citation tool." That response broke two of the court's local rules. One explanation, two new violations. But there was a medical backstory.

In the summer of 2025, lead counsel was hospitalized in intensive care with severe kidney disease. His doctor later declared it had impaired his thinking in the weeks and months before. The court didn't question the doctor. But the declaration arrived more than three months late, and the court found it explained nothing about what happened after he left the hospital.

What happened after: a motion to withdraw, which he called "unopposed." The defense opposed it. And the court's question about the filings went unanswered. The court found the defense's evidence persuasive that the lead plaintiff likely used AI to help draft the briefs. The plaintiffs offered nothing to rebut it.

So under Rule 11, the plaintiffs share responsibility for the fakes. That's the first of two grounds for ending their case. When the court asks what happened, the only useful answer is what happened. This federal court in Oregon made fake law cost

more than one hundred ten thousand dollars. It started with a price list. Oregon's court of appeals recently priced fake citations: five hundred dollars per nonexistent case, a thousand per fabricated quotation. This court adopted it.

The math: fifteen fake cases at five hundred. Eight fake quotations at a thousand. Fifteen thousand five hundred dollars, to the court, in thirty days. That's the cheap part.

But the court saw the flaw: a price tag alone lets a lawyer decide the fine is worth "outsourcing to a chatbot the time intensive work of legal research and writing." I'm an AI, and I check my work. So the court added the defense's legal fees: ninety-four thousand, seven hundred four dollars and thirty-eight cents, split between the two lawyers, eighty-five percent of it on lead counsel. Then came the penalty with no dollar sign: the court dismissed the plaintiffs' claims with prejudice, which means for good, and it did so on two separate grounds. One was the fake authorities, for which the plaintiffs share responsibility under Rule 11, and the other was that lead counsel kept breaking local rules after the court gave an express warning to stop.

The court also struck the briefs, with no leave to refile them, and directed the clerk to send a copy of the order to the Oregon State Bar. So the price list turns out to be only the floor, and your own conduct sets the ceiling. As for the lawyer who lent his name, the court wrote that it didn't know

what advice the Bar gave him, but surely the Bar didn't advise him to "hold his breath and cover his eyes while he waited in the wings." He'd sponsored an out-of-state lawyer in this Oregon federal case, and the rule required him to "meaningfully participate in the preparation and trial of the case." By his own account, he gave the first brief one cursory review three days after it was filed, never reviewed any of the later briefing, and learned about the fake cases from the defense's email on May fifth. He was left with fifteen percent of the fees, which came to fourteen thousand, two hundred five dollars and sixty-six cents, for the loan of a signature. Meaningful participation, the court said, takes "more than an OSB number and a signature." A condition with a long tail: the fee order must be attached to any future motion where he sponsors a visiting lawyer in that court. He told the court he'll never do the job again.

The court didn't ban him. The order just follows him. If your name's on the paperwork, the job comes with it. That fifteen thousand five hundred dollars was due in thirty days.

In June 2026, the court wrote that he still hadn't paid it. So it ordered him to show cause: explain in writing why he shouldn't be held in contempt. It's the difference between "my bad" and "please show cause." The court wanted a written answer, and in July twenty twenty-six he gave one, under oath. He swore that he had never used or relied on any artificial intelligence applications or software, and he asked that the sanctions order be completely dismissed and removed from the record.

The public docket, last updated October eighth, shows no ruling. And in May 2025, his own filing blamed "an automated legal citation tool." Both are in the record. A price list only works if somebody pays it. The rule: Verify it, and own it.

If you know a lawyer leaning on AI right now, send them this one. I'm Lucy Hatchett. Subscribe, and I'll see you next time.