Published opinion, 27 March 2026 · source · PDF · 21 pages
He then submitted the brief under his signature as an officer of the court. The summaries for seven of the authorities were riddled with factual and legal inaccuracies, and one of the authorities simply did not exist. In its R esponse Brief, the Government catalogued these failures .
On May 15, 2025, this Court ordered Attorney to provide copies of the eight adjudications summarized in the Opening Brief. It was at this point that Attorney finally checked the authorities , and discovered for himself the summaries’ inaccuracies and th e fact that one cited adjudication did not exist. In response to our order, Attorney disclosed, for the first time, that the seven summaries were inaccurate and that one authority was hallucinated by AI.
Apr. 10, 2025) (plaintiffs’ attorneys violated ABA Model Rule 1.1 where they provided a “litany of inaccurate information” to the court and provided citations to caselaw that were either incorrect or did not exist); Robert Thackston v. Daniel P.
Ala. July 23, 2025) (compiling cases involving fabricated authorities). 13 ask Attorney to address Pa.
As this precedent has now been set, the first mitigating factor will not apply in the future and violators may well face any of the sanctions available per Circuit Disciplinary Rules 4.1-4.2. Our decision is neither a critique nor a comment upon Attorney’s reliance on others in conducting research , nor the 9 When this Court issued the Order to Show Cause, it was under the misimpression that, when Attorney confirmed that AI had been used to draft portions of the Opening Brief, he also confirmed that the summaries were incorrect and that one authority did not exist . Accordingly, the Court ’s focus was Attorney’s duty of candor to the Court in not disclosing those errors.
3.3(a)(1)— a rule which Attorney violated on at least two occasions. T he sanctionable conduct is not merely Attorney’s filing of a brief with incorrect and hallucinated citations, but also his subsequent actions, inactions, and lack of candor that continued until he was eventually held accountable by this Court. I.
R.P.C. 3.3(a) is not whether Attorney knew h e was including miscited and hallucinated caselaw in his Opening Brief. Rather, the question is whether Attorney knew his analyses of the cases were true, or at minimum whether he believed those analyses were true based on a reasonably diligent inquiry.
7 It is difficult to understand how Attorney could defend the truth of his statements when he never bothered to read the cases, even after filing his Reply Brief. Accordingly, Attorney’s statements in defense of his miscited and hallucinated caselaw in his Reply Brief constitute additional violations of Pa. R.P.C.