FRCP 11 Was The Source Of The Sanctions, With Monetary Sanctions Depending On Whether The Conduct Was In Bad Faith Or Merely Careless.
We have blogged on numerous California appellate opinions sanctioning attorneys for utilizing AI when it produced hallucinations for which opposing parties or the appellate courts must parse through, eventually discovering that the cases are non-existent or the citations do not support the propositions being advanced. Now, we provide a recent Mississippi federal district court decision which imposes both monetary and significant non-monetary sanctions in a case where both sides used AI which produced hallucinations.
In Withers, III v. City of Aberdeen, Civ. Action No. 1:24-CV-218-SA-RP (N.D. Miss. June 8, 2026) [sanctions order, Docket No. 123], Senior U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock faced a situation where attorneys representing both sides in a contractual dispute (some counsel of record and some admitted pro hac vice) engaged in similar sanctionable conduct by citing to AI hallucinations in pleadings. Based on FRCP 11, the district court decided that sanctions were appropriate against all attorneys, including those admitted pro hac vice. Monetary sanctions were imposed based on whether the attorney’s conduct was deemed to be in bad faith or was the result of negligence/carelessness—all aggregating about $8,000. However, the non-monetary sanctions were more consequential: all of the attorneys were disqualified from the case (revoked as to pro hac vice attorneys) and all sanctioned counsel had to report the district court’s order to their respective State Bars (and one counsel had to report to a bankruptcy court where that attorney had been found guilty of improper AI use). Another sober lesson to check and verify AI-generated results, not blindly trusting that it is trustworthy.