$10K Fine for Lawyer Who Filed Brief Apparently Containing Many Hallucinations

While the panel was preparing for oral argument on the merits of this matter, it came to the court’s attention that in petitioner’s opening brief there were case citations to nonexistent cases and quotations that did not exist anywhere in Oregon case law. At the beginning of the scheduled oral argument, the Presiding Judge of the panel asked petitioner’s counsel for an explanation about the fabricated law contained in the brief. That questioning was followed up with the attached show cause order requesting a more detailed explanation….

The following information is based on the representations of counsel contained in their responses, which we accept for the purpose of determining the sanctions. However, we do not necessarily accept all of the representations as fact….

[In a written response,] Petitioner’s counsel apologized and acknowledged that the brief fell short of the standards of his office and of the profession. Counsel also explained the circumstances surrounding the submission of the opening brief. He noted that, at the time of filing, early November 2024, he was having serious health issues that had been present for some time. He had already filed numerous motions to extend the deadline to file the brief and stated that he “had exhausted the available extensions due to previous motions to extend.” {Although counsel had filed many extensions of time, counsel had not been informed that no further time extensions would be granted for the filing of his opening brief—the record contains no such communication from the court. Regardless, we do not think that is relevant to counsel’s ultimate decision to file a brief filled with fabricated citations.}

He delegated certain legal research tasks to staff and did not personally verify the citations and quotations prior to submitting the brief. He stated that he “relied on what [he] believed at the time to be legitimate legal authority, but later discovered was inaccurate citations found through an unverified search engine being used by staff for legal research” and that that “resulted in errors and inaccurate legal authority unintentionally being included throughout Appellant’s Opening Brief.”

Petitioner’s counsel explained that his office has a clear policy and practice against using artificial intelligence (AI) to draft legal documents or conduct legal research; AI is permitted for basic administrative tasks such as creating argument outlines, organizing case notes, and transcribing conversations. For the brief in question, AI was used to create an outline of the arguments that needed to be made; however, he explained that the actual drafting of the brief, including legal analysis, arguments, and writing, was done by counsel and his staff without further AI assistance.

Counsel further explained that after creating the outline, his staff used Westlaw and Lexis to try to find supporting case law. After finding limited cases on point, his staff turned to search engines such as Google and Safari and started searching for cases on point about the particular subject matter of the case, which led to what appeared to be legitimate legal analysis—”a link that discussed Oregon case law using legal citation format and legal terminology.” Counsel’s staff believed that those citations were real cases from legitimate sources and copied the case citations and some of the language directly into the brief. Counsel and his staff did not verify any of those citations in Westlaw or Lexis before filing the brief. Counsel has tried but has been unable to locate the direct source again after over a year has passed from originally incorporating the case citations into the brief. Counsel reports that “if one asks Google’s search engine whether many of the fabricated cases are real, it will generate a response using its artificial intelligence search engine, affirming that the fabricated case are in fact real.”

Counsel represents that he and the law firm have taken steps to address the errors, ensure accountability, and prevent any recurrence. Those steps include (1) review of “all citations and authorities contained in any filing with any court” by an attorney or other qualified staff, (2) restriction of “all legal citation to only Westlaw Precision and LexisNexis,” or cases that are in the Pacific Reporters or other published and verified legal precedent, and (3) implementation of a system of increased review to allow “additional time for each pleading so that no pleading is rushed” and each is read over for completeness and accuracy….

Petitioner’s counsel asserts that there was no intentional concealment of the citation issues because he acknowledged the errors to the court at oral argument in November 2025, and attempted to demonstrate good faith compliance with obligations outlined in the rules of professional conduct. The problem with that stance, however, is that the fabricated citations were called to counsel’s attention by respondent’s counsel in an email dated April 3, 2025, before respondent’s answering brief was filed. In addition, the answering brief, filed on April 16, 2025, contains a footnote stating that there were case citations in the opening brief that “counsel has been unable to locate by name, reporter citations, or quoted text.”

Petitioner’s counsel reportedly did not respond to the email from respondent’s counsel and did not address the fabricated citations and quotations in the reply brief, or otherwise seek to correct the citations. That is, petitioner’s counsel did not address the nonexistent citations and quotations in any manner for seven months until in-person questioning by the court, despite having been made aware of them. And, when given the opportunity to explain, counsel did not provide any explanation for the lack of correction during that lengthy time period.

For that reason, we conclude that petitioner’s counsel minimized the gravity of the situation—at least until face-to-face with our court—and we conclude that sanctions are warranted….

In Ringo [a previous hallucination sanction case], we concluded that “monetary sanctions, payable by [the] respondents’ counsel, in the amount of $500 for each false citation, and $1,000 for each false quotation or statement of law” were appropriate, after having examined the decisions of other courts facing similar circumstances. In that case, that formula resulted in a total monetary sanction of $2,000…. Applying the formula we used in Ringo, the monetary sanctions here would be a minimum of $16,500— $500 for each of the 15 fabricated citations and $1,000 for each of the nine fabricated quotations. {Given our decision to cap the monetary sanction, we have not spent additional court resources on calculating the number of incorrect propositions of law contained in the opening brief.}

We conclude that under the circumstances here, we will cap the sanction at $10,000. We do so for several reasons: petitioner’s counsel’s response to our show cause order was due and was filed prior to the issuance of our decision in Ringo; petitioner’s counsel provided a detailed explanation of how the false citations and quotations came to be in the brief; and petitioner’s counsel has acknowledged the need for and reportedly implemented new office procedures to prevent another occurrence in the future.

A significant sanction, however, is still appropriate because counsel at least should have known, well before our decision in Ringo, that submitting a brief with unchecked and ultimately fabricated citations may breach an attorney’s duties of professionalism, truthfulness, and candor to the court. Here, that has cost the court and respondent’s counsel substantial time and expense, pulling them and us away from other work in our justice system.

Whether an attorney relies on a partner or associate for an initial draft of a brief or, instead, overly relies on a computer, which may be risky but perhaps not improper on its own, prior to filing, the attorney signing the final filed brief is certifying that the citations therein are accurate and not contrived from thin air. The advent of generative AI did not change that principle although the software’s unreliability and tendency to fabricate might have brought more to light the transgressions of that principle….