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Courts on AI / Fabricated or misquoted citations

Kennon v. Ashley

United States District Court for the District of Kansas · Federal district courts · KS · · No. Case 5:24-cv-04034-JWB-BGS · memorandum opinion

District of Kansas on 2026-02-18 in Kennon v. Ashley found counsel's brief contained nine citation defects, including Take me to jail, Okay and It was the language, involving nonexistent authorities, fabricated or misattributed quotations. The court ordered counsel to show cause why sanctions, striking, or referral should not issue for the defective authorities.

Disposition
The court ordered counsel to show cause why sanctions, striking, or referral should not issue for the defective authorities.
Recorded conduct
Counsel's brief contained nine citation defects, including Take me to jail, Okay and It was the language, involving nonexistent authorities, fabricated or misattributed quotations. — outcome: pending; actor: lawyer
Canonical record
Incident tracker entry — verified outcome, regulator disposition and related rules

What the court wrote

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

surrounding passages that Plaintiff omits. (Doc. 55-1 at 115-116.) The short, punctual exchange that Plaintiff quotes, does not exist. On page nine, Plaintiff quotes another long passage from the Ashley deposition that the court won’t bother to reproduce. (Doc. 55 at 9) (quoting Doc. 55-1 at 161:22-162:16). While the subject matter of the cited portion is vaguely on point, the quoted passage does not exist. This pattern of behavior is egregious. The repetition rules out any likelihood of inadvertence. It is unclear to the court what Plaintiff’s attorney was attempting to achieve. He has succeeded only in being a kamikaze to his credibility. Plaintiff is responsible for the content of his filings with the court. Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b). Inaccuracies or misrepresentations are grounds

Authorities cited in the passage: what he said, not what he did · It was the language · No, not that I recall · There was no contact · not threatening · No. I didn · He didn · after reviewing the video footage · footage · So why did you arrest him? · He said · I said

compiled by the Cognesio LLP editorial teammethodas of 2026-09-07v0.1.1coding CC BY 4.0JSON Hugging Face GitHub