Three late-August federal orders are useful to read together because they show something easy to miss in the current discussion around AI-tainted filings.
The issue is not just whether bad citations appeared in a filing.
It is how courts sort out responsibility, procedure, candor, and remedy after that happens.
The orders in Booker v. The Kroger Co., Adams v. Matrix Providers Inc., and In re Turgeon do not land in the same place. One involves admitted AI consultation and a direct sanctions order. One leaves AI causation unresolved while criticizing counsel's judgment and rule compliance. One involves a pro se debtor, no AI finding, and a stricken filing rather than a separate sanctions ruling. A fourth recent opinion, Snisko v. Cascade Funding Mortgage Trust HB4, adds another variation: a merits affirmance and a same-opinion show-cause order directed at counsel over allegedly fabricated quotations and misrepresentations. Read together, they show that even when AI is part of the background, the consequence still turns on human conduct and procedural posture.
Booker: The Court Reached A Direct Rule 11 Sanctions Order
Booker is the clearest of the three.
In an August 28 Opinion and Order of Sanctions, Judge Steven D. Grimberg sanctioned plaintiff's counsel for using "fake or hallucinated case authorities" and for misrepresenting real authorities. The order also says counsel lied to the court about AI use.
That candor point mattered.
The court quoted its own standing order: lawyers may use whatever AI tools they like, but only human beings will be held responsible for the outcome. The order says counsel first denied using AI at the hearing, then later acknowledged that he had "consulted" AI tools. The court found that counsel had repeatedly lied to the court and used an "entirely disingenuous" explanation to minimize responsibility.
The sanction was concrete and public. The court imposed $1,000 for each of four highlighted fake, false, or misleading authorities, then doubled that amount because of the lies to the court, for a total sanction of $8,000. It also ordered counsel to file documentation verifying the ethics and technology CLE training he said he had completed.
The practical lesson is that citation failures can become materially more costly after the court concludes that counsel responded with evasion instead of candor, including by falsely denying AI use.
Adams: The Court Criticized The Briefing, But The Remedy Was Narrower
The August 27 order in Adams took a different path.
Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney described serious problems in plaintiff's briefing, including a phantom citation to a nonexistent case, numerous inaccurate descriptions of case holdings, and repeated failures to support assertions with accurate record citations. The court also addressed counsel's explanation that Ricks v. Starbucks was included inadvertently during a family emergency while unnamed outside help and a paralegal assisted with finalizing the briefs.
But the order stopped short of turning the whole episode into a sweeping AI sanctions opinion.
The court expressly said it was unclear whether the briefing failures resulted from AI use or from "poor and unexacting legal judgment." Either way, the court found the conduct highly concerning. It also cited the Tenth Circuit's statement in Amarsingh v. Frontier Airlines that there is nothing inherently problematic about using GenAI in legal practice, while careless use can waste judicial resources and damage credibility.
The court admonished Pearson over the citation failures. Its $1,000 monetary sanction, however, was framed around the courthouse-photography violation and repeated failure to follow local rules and practice standards, although the concluding sanction paragraph also cited Rule 11(c)(1). The order should not be read as assigning a $1,000 sanction specifically to the phantom citation.
That is a useful distinction. A filing may contain AI-shaped defects without producing the kind of direct hallucination order that Booker delivered. Courts may instead fold the problem into a broader assessment of judgment, local-rule compliance, and lawyer conduct.
Turgeon: The Court Struck The Filing And Focused On Case Management
Turgeon is different again.
The New Hampshire district court affirmed the bankruptcy court's dismissal of the debtor's Chapter 13 case. In recounting the record, the order explains that the bankruptcy judge questioned the debtor about "false, hallucinated case citations" in an objection to the trustee's motion to dismiss, found the citations inaccurate and misleading, and struck the objection.
The opinion also notes that the debtor was given a chance to cure by filing an amended objection and did not do so.
What matters here is what the court did not do. This was not a separate Rule 11 sanctions order. The district court did not treat the citation defects as a basis for dismissal. It held that the bankruptcy court could strike the objection under § 105(a), emphasized the two-week opportunity to amend, and rejected the due-process challenge after Turgeon failed to cure. The Chapter 13 dismissal rested on separate plan-filing and delay grounds.
That makes Turgeon a reminder that citation problems do not always become standalone sanctions opinions. Sometimes they appear as part of a court's effort to manage the docket and police misleading filings without converting the dispute into a separate sanctions proceeding.
Snisko: The Merits Can End And The Citation Fight Can Still Begin
Snisko contributes a narrower but useful procedural point.
In the same August 19 opinion that affirmed the bankruptcy court's abstention ruling, Judge Manish S. Shah separately ordered appellant's counsel to show cause why he should not be sanctioned for fabricated legal citations and other misrepresentations. The opinion said the brief was "replete with false quotations and erroneous statements of law," identified apparent quotations that do not appear in cited cases including In re Aguirre and In re Boughton, and said counsel "doubled down" in the reply after the defects had been flagged.
The order does not make an express AI finding. That is part of why it matters. It shows that a court does not need to resolve how the errors were produced before opening a sanctions track. It also shows that citation risk can survive the merits, or in this case be embedded in the same opinion that resolves them.
The Pattern Is Human Accountability, Not Tool Liability
Taken together, the three orders tell a more useful story than a generic warning not to trust AI.
They show that courts are still applying familiar legal ideas:
- responsibility attaches to the signed filing;
- candor after an error can materially affect sanction severity;
- procedural posture can shape whether the outcome is a Rule 11 sanction, a local-rule sanction, a stricken filing, a same-opinion show-cause order, or some combination; and
- the court does not need a grand theory of AI causation before acting.
That is why the recent AI filing cases should not be read as a separate body of exotic law. They are mostly ordinary supervision, certification, and litigation-conduct rules applied to a new source of error at scale.
What Law Firms Should Change
The control problem is not just whether a tool generated a fake case name.
It is whether the workflow catches:
- nonexistent authorities;
- real authorities used for false propositions;
- quotations that do not appear in the source;
- inaccurate record references;
- misleading procedural narratives; and
- bad post-error responses that make the situation worse.
The second control point is escalation. Once a court or opposing party flags a possible hallucination or fake authority, the matter should leave ordinary drafting flow and move into a higher-review path led by a supervising lawyer. That follow-up needs independent source verification, a clean explanation of what happened, and absolute candor with the court.
Booker shows what happens when that second step fails. Snisko shows that simply repeating the challenged position after notice can deepen the problem even before a sanctions amount is set. Booker also shows that a court may reserve whether further sanctions are warranted while requiring proof of the remedial training counsel says he has completed.
Bottom Line
The late-August orders do not create a single AI doctrine under Rule 11.
They do show a stable principle.
Courts still care most about the human choices around the filing: who signed it, who checked it, how the lawyer responded when the defects surfaced, and whether the court's rules were taken seriously. AI may explain how the error entered the draft. It does not replace the lawyer who owns the result.
Sources and Related Clearon Coverage
- damiencharlotin.com
- damiencharlotin.com
- damiencharlotin.com
- damiencharlotin.com
- Justia docket page for *Booker v. The Kroger Co. et al.*
- Justia document page for *Adams v. Matrix Providers Inc. et al.*
- Justia document page for *Turgeon v. Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation*
- Justia docket page for *Snisko v. Cascade Funding Mortgage Trust HB4*
- clearon-ai.com
- clearon-ai.com
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