analysisAI HallucinationsAI in Courts
The $110,000 Oregon AI-sanctions case, and what the coverage got wrong
Oregon's ~$110,000 AI-sanctions case: terminating sanctions for fifteen fake cases and eight fabricated quotations, and why the headline figure is an aggregate.
In the US District Court for the District of Oregon, a magistrate judge threw out a case and sanctioned the plaintiffs’ lead counsel for filing three briefs built on citations that did not exist. Couvrette v. Wisnovsky, No. 1:21-cv-00157-CL, decided by Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarke on 12 December 2025, is widely cited as a “$110,000” AI-sanctions case. That number is real, but it is an aggregate assembled from two separate orders and shared across two lawyers — not a single fine on a single attorney, which is how much of the coverage framed it.
What happened
Briefing cross-motions for summary judgment, lead counsel Stephen Brigandi filed three briefs that, between them, cited fifteen non-existent cases and carried fabricated quotations falsely attributed to eight real authorities. The court described the scale plainly:
“In the quickly expanding universe of cases involving sanctions for the misuse of artificial intelligence, this case is a notorious outlier in both degree and volume.”
What moved it from error to misconduct was the response. When the defendants identified the fakes, the amended briefs did not correct them. They deleted the quotation marks around the invented passages while leaving the underlying fabrications in place, and a Notice of Errata failed to acknowledge or fix the non-existent cases the defendants had flagged.
What the court decided
The court found this the rare case warranting the most severe response:
“If there was ever an ‘appropriate case’ to grant terminating sanctions for the misuse of artificial intelligence, this is it.”
It struck the sanctionable briefs, ordered Brigandi to pay monetary sanctions, ordered local counsel Timothy Murphy to show cause, and dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims with prejudice. It directed the Clerk to transmit the order to the Oregon State Bar; Brigandi appeared pro hac vice and is a California attorney, so the referral is to the bar, with no disposition yet on record. A motion for reconsideration was denied on 22 June 2026, leaving the sanctions in place.
The money, corrected
The headline figure comes from two distinct rulings.
The 12 December 2025 order imposed a clerk sanction of $15,500 on Brigandi, calculated mechanically: adopting an Oregon Court of Appeals valuation of “$500 per non-existent case and $1,000 per fabricated quotation,” the court multiplied $500 by the fifteen fake cases and $1,000 by the eight fabricated quotations.
A later fees order added roughly $94,700 in the defendants’ attorney’s fees and expenses. That award was split by responsibility, with the great majority falling to Brigandi and a minority share to local counsel Murphy, rather than loaded entirely onto lead counsel.
Add the two and the total lands near $110,000. The distinction the coverage flattened matters: the sum is a clerk sanction plus a fees award, spread across two lawyers, not a $110,000 penalty on one.
Why it matters
The case is a marker for the top of the US sanctions range. The court reached terminating sanctions not because AI was used, but because the fabrications were numerous, were then concealed, and were defended rather than withdrawn. The mechanical per-item valuation the court borrowed — a fixed price per fake case and per fake quotation — is the more portable idea. It turns “misuse of AI” into an arithmetic a court can apply, and it is the calculation other benches now have to hand.