Asked to supply authority for consolidated appeals over a 2022 fireworks show and its aftermath in Athens, Tennessee, the drafting tool produced case law in ordinary citation form that did not hold up: a "Berg v. Knox Cnty., TN, 2024 WL 2012345, at *4 (6th Cir. Mar. 12, 2024)" citation for judicial recusal, where no such case exists and the Westlaw citation generates no results; "Jones v. Hamilton Cnty., 29 F.4th 647, 655 (6th Cir. 2022)" for the sanctions standard under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, where those Federal Reporter cites actually point to two unrelated Tenth Circuit cases, one about unfair competition and one about a guilty plea; a quotation repeatedly attributed to Adcock-Ladd v. Secretary of the Treasury, 227 F.3d 343, 350 (6th Cir. 2000) — "[t]he mere fact that a plaintiff did not prevail does not mean that the claim was frivolous" — which does not appear in that opinion, a case about which market is used to calculate attorney fees; and United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012) cited for the proposition that the First Amendment does not protect knowingly false statements of fact, when the plurality opinion held the opposite. The Sixth Circuit's March 13, 2026 panel counted "over two dozen fake citations and misrepresentations of fact" across the consolidated appeals — "a conservative estimate" that excluded typos and sloppy citations — and found the briefs also misstated the record, arguing that the district court imposed sanctions sua sponte when the sanctions had in fact been issued on the city's motion expressly requesting them under § 1927. Nothing in the filings disclosed which material had been machine-drafted, or that the authority had not been checked. The court's show-cause order asked the attorneys whether they used generative AI and how they cite-checked; they replied that the order was "void on its face" and "motivated by harassment." The opinion therefore does not rest on an express finding that AI produced the citations.
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Expert: Judge John K. Bush, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Author of the March 13, 2026 sanctions opinion in Whiting v. City of Athens The Sixth Circuit's March 13, 2026 opinion in Whiting v. City of Athens is not really a ruling about a chatbot. It is a ruling about what happens when nobody opens the cases the drafting tool cited: "All told, we found over two dozen fake citations and misrepresentations of fact in Whiting's briefs," Judge John K. Bush wrote for the panel (Judges Jane B. Stranch, John K. Bush and Eric E. Murphy), calling that count "a conservative estimate" that set aside typos and sloppy citations attributable to drafting error rather than misconduct. The appendix documents five failure modes, every one of them dressed in ordinary legal citation form. Non-existent authority: a "Berg v. Knox Cnty., TN, 2024 WL 2012345, at *4 (6th Cir. Mar. 12, 2024)" citation offered for judicial recusal, where the judge found no such case exists and the only Westlaw source citing a Sixth Circuit "Berg v. Knox Cnty." is Whiting's own briefing. Real cases with wrong reporters: "Jones v. Hamilton Cnty., 29 F.4th 647, 655 (6th Cir. 2022)" resolves to two unrelated Tenth Circuit decisions, neither discussing fees or sanctions. Fabricated quotations: the briefs repeatedly quoted Adcock-Ladd v. Secretary of the Treasury, 227 F.3d 343, 350 (6th Cir. 2000) for "[t]he mere fact that a plaintiff did not prevail does not mean that the claim was frivolous," language the opinion does not contain, in a case about whether fee awards follow the plaintiff's or the defendant's home market. Cases cited for the opposite of what they hold: United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012) was cited for the proposition that false speech is unprotected, when the plurality "reject[ed] the notion that false speech should be in a general category that is presumptively unprotected." And the briefs misstated the record itself, arguing the district court sanctioned Whiting sua sponte without notice when sanctions had been issued on the city's motion under 28 U.S.C. § 1927 — an error that undermined the whole due-process argument. The court grounded its sanctions in Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38 and its inherent authority, holding the appeals "frivolous as argued" because inventing case law misrepresents the law: "A fake opinion is not existing law, and citation to a fake opinion does not provide a non-frivolous ground for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law." On bad faith it wrote that "any reasonable attorney should know that a case is meritless if the only authority on which he can rely is a figment of imagination." The penalties: each attorney — Van R. Irion and Russ Egli — must pay $15,000 to the court registry, and both are jointly liable for the appellees' full reasonable appellate attorney fees plus double costs under 28 U.S.C. § 1920. The clerk must forward the opinion to the chief judge for disciplinary proceedings under Sixth Circuit Local Rule 46. The court listed four aggravating factors, including that the two were appealing earlier findings of misconduct ("We find it deeply concerning that a lawyer would engage in further misconduct on appeal from a finding that they engaged in misconduct") and that both had prior discipline for lack of candor. Two points deserve separating. First, the panel deliberately did not rest its ruling on generative AI. Its show-cause order asked the attorneys to state whether they used gen AI and to explain their cite-checking, and the opinion's takeaway is tool-agnostic: "no filing should contain citations, however generated, that a lawyer has not personally read and verified." Second, the failure mode is structural, not cosmetic — fabricated and misquoted authority arrives in exactly the same citation format as real authority, so it survives every surface check and is caught only when a human retrieves and reads the cited case. The sanction landed on the lawyers who signed the brief, not on the tool, which the opinion never names. Sources: LawSites (lawnext.com), March 18, 2026, reporting the panel's March 13, 2026 opinion and its appendix in Whiting v. City of Athens; opinion PDF linked from that report. Source: https://www.lawnext.com/2026/03/sixth-circuit-slaps-steep-sanctions-on-two-lawyers-for-fake-citations-and-misrepresentations-in-appellate-briefs.html
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