The Medford Division of the U.S. District Court for Oregon recently imposed a sobering list of sanctions against both the attorneys and their client responsible for multiple instances of AI-generated fake citations and quotes in summary judgment briefing. The court noted that both the conduct and the remedies imposed were extreme. Sometimes extreme examples, however, offer the best teaching tools for everyone else because they summarize their lessons in one place.
Couvrette v. Wisnovsky, 2025 WL 4109655 (D. Or. Dec. 12, 2025) (unpublished) involved an intrafamily dispute over a winery. Across three separate briefs on cross-motions for summary judgment over a five-month period, the plaintiffs’ briefing included 15 AI-generated fake case citations and eight fabricated quotations. When the non-existent cases came to light, counsel did not explain themselves. Instead, they simply offered to file a notice of errata if the defendants pursued a motion for sanctions. Further, during the subsequent litigation over sanctions, it came to light that one of the clients may have played a role in generating the fake citations and quotations with an unidentified AI tool. The court found that the lawyers took no steps to verify the citations using a conventional citator. It also noted the “total lack of remorse” by the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer.
Citing both Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 (governing lawyer certifications for court filings) and Oregon RPC 3.3 (addressing the duty of candor to courts), the court then unloaded. It first struck the errant briefs without leave to refile them. Because the evidence suggested client participation (describing the plaintiff involved as a “serial self-represented litigator”), the court also dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims with prejudice. It then fined the lead lawyer $15,500 using a fake citation/quotation formula developed recently by the Oregon Court of Appeals in another unhappy instance of AI “hallucinations” (Ringo v. Colquhoun Design Studio, LLC, 345 Or. App. 301, __ P.3d __ (2025)) and awarded the defendants attorney fees on both the summary judgment and sanctions briefing. The court concluded by directing the clerk to send a copy of the decision to the Oregon State Bar.
The WSBA recently released a comprehensive advisory opinion—202505—addressing, among other topics, competent use of AI tools in law practice and the associated duty of candor to courts. As the federal court in Oregon pointed out, there have now been enough “hallucination” cases to have a website devoted to recording them. The duty of competent representation includes understanding both the benefits—and the risks—of the technology used in law practice. Given what is an increasingly known risk of “hallucinated” citations, the federal court in Oregon also stressed an obvious solution: checking citations using a reliable service to ensure their accuracy. Another recent Oregon case illustrates that sanctions are not necessarily inevitable if a law firm is forthright with the court. In Green Building Initiative, Inc. v. Peacock, 350 F.R.D. 289 (D. Or. 2025) (order to show cause), 2025 WL 3198411 (D. Or. Nov. 12, 2025) (unpublished) (resolving order to show cause), a law firm that had inadvertently included two AI-generated fake citations in a brief promptly acknowledged the problem and voluntarily took remedial actions that satisfied the court.
As Couvrette underscores, however, a law firm that doesn’t take reasonable precautions when using an AI tool and then doesn’t “fess up” if problems surface is risking a “parade of horribles.”
