Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, PROCEDURE—N.D. Tex.: Attorney reprimanded for filing brief with nonexistent legal citations, (Nov 12, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

Attorneys who “imprudently rely on GAI tools to create legal filings diminish the legal profession.”

Reprimanding an attorney who did not disclose that she had filed, whether inadvertently or otherwise, a brief containing nonexistent cases hallucinated by generative artificial intelligence (GAI), a federal court in Texas explained that her conduct, while sanctionable, did not appear to have been malicious. And although her attempt to fix the brief with an “opaque disclosure” and without leave of court, at least initially, was inconsistent with the degree of candor it expected, the court nonetheless found an admonition to be sufficient here (Shelton v. Parkland Health, No. 3:24-CV-2190-L-BW (N.D. Tex. Nov. 10, 2025)).

Amended brief. The attorney filed a lawsuit on behalf of her client alleging the client’s employer had discriminated and retaliated against her client based on her pregnancy. The attorney subsequently filed a motion for summary judgment on the employer’s affirmative defenses and a brief in support. Two weeks later, she filed an amended brief without first seeking leave from the court. Two days after that, the attorney’s client filed a motion seeking leave to file the amended brief that had already been filed.

Deficiencies. In the motion, the client stated that the amendment was made to “address deficiencies per her counsel’s conferences with Defendant’s counsel.” Also in the motion, the attorney reported that she delegated part of the research and drafting for the original brief to someone else and that she did not personally check the accuracy of each legal citation before filing the brief. Once the employer’s counsel brought the errors to her attention, she stated, she filed the amended brief and asked the court to consider it as having been filed with leave.

Responding to the motion, the employer’s counsel said she suspected the original brief was prepared using GAI as several of the cited cases either did not support the legal proposition for which they were used or did not exist at all. Counsel pointed out that she had informed the attorney of the errors, shared her suspicions about the use of GAI, informed her of the court’s local rule requiring disclosure of the use of GAI in the preparation of any brief, and gave her a deadline to provide an explanation before she notified the court.

Order to show cause. In a subsequent order requiring the attorney to show cause whether it should impose sanctions, the court expressed concern about the attorney’s conduct. In her response, the attorney claimed a newly licensed associate, who had previously worked remotely for her, used GAI to prepare the brief even though the attorney had given her access to her Lexis account. The attorney further claimed that in reviewing the brief, she focused on writing style and the application of law to the evidence and did not check the accuracy of each of the cases cited. Her reliance on the associate attorney, she argued, satisfied the duty of reasonable inquiry imposed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b)(2), at least until errors were brought to her attention. Neither, she claimed, did she knowingly file a brief prepared using GAI without disclosing it per court rules and she acted in good faith to remedy the errors once she learned of them.

For its part, the employer argued that the attorney’s unverified assumption her associate used her Lexis account to prepare the brief instead of GAI did not meet Rule 11(b)(3) standard, she violated Local Rule 7.2(f) by failing to disclose the use of GAI, and sanctions were appropriate based on her failure to disclose the “true reason” for amending the brief. The employer did not, however, specify the amount of time spent or costs incurred in responding to her conduct.

Well known. Noting that the “number of judicial decisions decrying the problems associated with legal briefs prepared using GAI is substantial and growing weekly,” the court pointed out that “[f]or some time, it has been well known—and well-publicized—that generative AI tools ‘hallucinate’ fake cases.” Further, said the court, an “ethical use of GAI tools obligates counsel to ‘ensure that the legal propositions and authority generated are trustworthy’ and ‘check all the cases and quotations for accuracy’” and attorneys “who do less and imprudently rely on GAI tools to create legal filings diminish the legal profession.”

Original brief. Turning to the original summary judgment brief filed by the attorney, the court accepted her assertion she did not know the legal citations were produced using GAI, which allowed it to find that she did not willfully violate its local rule in filing the brief. As to her duty of reasonable inquiry under Rule 11(b), however, the court found she “was at least negligent when she accepted a draft from a newly minted lawyer without checking the legal citations, especially in light of the proliferation of GAI tools.”

Not only did she acknowledge she did not check “each of the citations,” but also, she did not assure the court that she checked any of them. Moreover, her response to the show cause order, said the court, revealed that she never cautioned her associate on, or created a policy about, the use of GAI. The court also noted that the original brief contained red flags, such as a Fifth Circuit decision cited in an unconventional manner, that “should have signaled to a conscientious review that additional inquiry was warranted.” All of this, said the court, led it to find the attorney did not satisfy her obligation to make a make a reasonable inquiry before filing the original brief.

Subsequent filings. Regarding her subsequent filings, the court again pointed to Local Rule 7.2(f), which requires a conspicuous disclosure of the use by an attorney of GAI to prepare a brief filed in the court. The absence of a disclosure, the court stated, operates as a certification that “no part of the brief was prepared using generative artificial intelligence.” While the attorney pointed to her Houston-based practice in suggesting that a lack of deep knowledge of the Dallas-based court’s rules contributed to the problem, after the employer’s counsel informed her of the rule, she fixed only the problematic legal citation in the amended brief. Otherwise, the court observed, the two briefs were practically identical in substance.

She knew when she filed the amended brief that the original had been prepared using GAI and she was fully aware of the local rule. Nonetheless, she filed it without any disclosure “and in doing so, certified that ‘no part’” was prepared using GAI. While the court acknowledged the possibility her revisions to the draft of the original brief were so substantial that the attorney knew with complete confidence that only the legal citations could have been prepared using GAI, it noted that in her motion to file the amended brief she “admitted to her mistakes” but minimized the issue, “doing so out of an apparent hope that it might go unnoticed by the Court.”

Indeed, she acknowledged that “a portion of the research and drafting” had been delegated to a newly licensed attorney or law student intern and that the brief had “citations... that were not accurate,” but she did not disclose that she had filed a brief containing nonexistent cases that were hallucinated by GAI. Her “attempt to fix the brief with an opaque disclosure and, at least initially, without leave of court is inconsistent with the degree of candor that is expected,” the court declared.

Judicial admonition. In finding that judicial admonition was a sufficient sanction here, the court noted that her conduct did not appear to have been malicious, and it was unaware of any prior instances of similar conduct. And while her errors unjustifiably burdened the employer and the court, the employer did not attempt to establish a precise cost incurred as a result of those errors and the parties have since settled the case. Accordingly, the court reprimanded the attorney for filing the brief with nonexistent legal citations without making any inquiry that would have been reasonable under the circumstances.

The case is No. 3:24-CV-2190-L-BW.

Judge: McKay, B.

Attorneys: Matthew R. McCarley (Forester Haynie) for Giovonni Shelton. Janet A. Hendrick (Phillips Murrah) for Parkland Health.

Companies: Parkland Health

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