Published opinion, 1 July 2026 · source · PDF · 8 pages
It was reassigned to me for the limited purpose of resolving exceptions to the Magistrate’s final report on advancement. On January 22, 2026, the plaintiffs filed an answering brief in opposition to the defendants’ exceptions (the “Answering Brief”) to the Magistrate’s advancement order.1 On January 27 , the defendants’ reply brief identified that the Answering Brief contained fictitious citations, fabricated quotations, and hallucinated legal propositions.2 1 Pls.’ Answering Br. in Opp’n to Defs.’ Exceptions (Dkt. 62).
4 The plaintiffs also filed a corrected Answering Brief. 5 Although this submission removed quotation marks around erroneous statements of law , it did not correct the inaccurate descriptions.6 The defendants’ counsel then filed a letter detailing the remaining misrepresentations in the corrected Answering Brief and identifying similar citation problems in the plaintiffs’ summary judgment briefing.7 outputs that are nonsensical or altogether inaccurate.” (quoting What Are Hallucinations?, IBM, https://www.ibm.com/topics/ai-hallucinations (last visited July 1, 2026))). 3 Letter Providing Corrected Answering Br. in Opp ’n to Defs.’ Exceptions (Dkt.
2025-0426-CDW (LWW) July 1, 2026 Page 5 of 8 The submission of hallucinated legal propositions raises an inference of a Rule 11(b) violation, requiring counsel to show cause why sanctions should not issue .19 A fictitious citation is not “existing law.”20 The duty of candor to the court, and the obligation to conduct a reasonable inquiry under Rule 11, are non delegable.21 Counsel cannot discharge those obligations by relying on a paralegal, much less on an artificial intelligence program.
Ala. 2025) (disqualifying an attorney who submitted unverified, hallucinated GenAI citations, finding the conduct reflected a “complete and utter disregard for [ his] professional duty of candor ” and “recklessness in the extreme . . . tantamount to bad faith”). 20 Ct.
Supp. 3d at 464 (finding bad faith where attorneys “advocated for the fake cases and legal arguments . . . after being informed by their adversary ’s submission that their citations were non-existent”). 23 For example, the corrected Answering Brief continues to rely on Perconti v.