Incident Tracker / United States (federal)
El Bitar v. Hernandez
·United States District Court for the Western District of Washington·US-FEDFineprovisional
On 2026-06-02, in Fadi El Bitar v. Julio Hernandez, the Western District of Washington imposed a $1,000 monetary sanction for the defective legal authorities. Counsel filed a petition using quotations that did not appear in the cited source. The monetary component was $1,000.
- Court
- United States District Court for the Western District of Washington
- Date
- 2026-06-02
- Who used the AI
- Lawyer
- AI tool
- Google Gemini
- Conduct
- Counsel filed habeas briefs citing Thai and Nadarajah with fabricated quotations; he stated interns used Google Gemini to generate text and failed to disclose that it fabricated citations. The court sanctioned counsel $1,000.
- Outcome
- Fine
- Penalty
- US$1,000
- Regulatory outcome
- No separate regulatory disposition recorded
- Status
- Provisional — written by the court-decisions pipeline, awaiting the editor
- Last checked
- 2026-09-07
Primary sources for this incident
Related regulation records for this incident
No related regulation record has been linked to this incident yet.
Similar incidents on the record
- Chirece C. v. Commissioner of Social Security, No. 25-11554 (E.D. Mich. 2026)2026-09-24 · United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan · FineIn Michigan federal court, Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Stafford fined a Social Security claimant's lawyer $500 for AI-generated fictitious citations she admitted not checking. The same lawyer had been sanctioned in July…
- Booker v. The Kroger Co., No. 1:26-cv-02006-SDG (N.D. Ga.)2026-08-28 · US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division · FineThe US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia fined employment plaintiff's lawyer Christopher Johnson USD 8,000, payable to the court's sanctions fund, for citing four nonexistent or misrepresented authorit…
- Adams v. Matrix Providers, No. 1:23-cv-01996 (D. Colo.)2026-08-27 · US District Court for the District of Colorado · FineThe US District Court for the District of Colorado fined counsel Ms Pearson USD 1,000 after her brief cited a nonexistent case and attributed a quotation to Justice Scalia from an opinion dated 2020, four years after hi…
- Benjamin v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 2:24-cv-7399 (LGD) (E.D.N.Y.)2025-04-24 · US District Court, Eastern District of New York · FineIn the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Magistrate Judge Lee G. Dunst fined attorney Victoria Hovsepyan $1,000 under Rule 11 after she used the AI platform ChatOn to draft a reply on a remand moti…
Cite this record
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “El Bitar v. Hernandez”, safelegalai.com/tracker/fadi-el-bitar-v-julio-hernandez (accessed 2026-10-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.