Parnell v. Florida Department of Corrections

What the court wrote

Verbatim from the court's document (public domain). Ellipses mark omitted text; nothing is paraphrased.

The FDOC has moved for sanctions under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 27 and our inherent authority, seeking attorney’s fees and to strike portions of Parnell’s reply brief. The FDOC argues that Parnell’s reply brief cites two non-existent court opinions and at least five non-existent quotations from our opinions. Parnell responds that he withdraws any erroneous statements in his reply brief, which renders the FDOC’s motion “moot.” He argues that the errors were not made in bad faith and his reply brief’s arguments are still legally correct.

We ordered supplemental briefing to provide Parnell’s counsel the opportunity to explain where the defective cases and quotes came from, but counsel merely repeats that he has been unable to identify a verified source with the non-existent opinions and that “the challenged material did not come from a verified review of the cited opinions.” Counsel does not provide an explanation for how the opinions appeared in the reply brief.

We are disappointed with counsel’s lack of forthcoming candor. Courts around the world currently face a well-publicized problem of attorneys citing hallucinated authorities. See Damien Charlotin, AI Hallucination Cases, https://perma.cc/U84C-WGA7 (last visited May, 22, 2026) (listing over 1000 judicial decisions dealing with AI hallucinations). Presumably, counsel wrote the reply brief, and should thus be familiar with how he came to rely on the nonexistent authorities. Whether the appellant’s citations were generated by AI, as we suspect, or simply made up by counsel, we nevertheless expect accurate representations from any attorney appearing before this Court.

Authorities cited in the passage: Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 27 · Damien Charlotin, AI Hallucination Cases, https://perma.cc/U84C-WGA7 · 11th Cir. R. 27-4 · Purchasing Power, LLC v. Bluestem Brands, Inc., 851 F.3d 1218 (11th Cir. 2017)