AI Citation Sanctions Roundup, Week 2: What Two Courts Did Between September 9 and September 17, 2026
Short answer: two new United States decisions landed this week. The District of Utah split $3,000 between two attorneys under Rule 11(c)(4), and Florida’s Sixth District found seven nonexistent cases in a pro se brief and gave ten days to show cause.
This is the second entry in a weekly beat that sits on top of our standing record of what courts have actually done about AI-hallucinated citations. Week 1 covered seven orders issued between August 27 and September 8, 2026. This week’s window runs from September 9 through September 17, 2026, and it is a short list. The AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin, read on September 18, 2026, reflects a September 14, 2026 update showing 2,041 total entries, of which 1,395 are United States entries. Week 1 reported the same database’s September 10, 2026 update at 2,036 total and 1,393 United States entries. The arithmetic is the point: exactly two new United States entries were added, and both are below.
What did the District of Utah do in Beus Gilbert v. Brigham Young University?
On September 9, 2026, Judge Ted Stewart issued an order at docket 385 in Beus Gilbert PLLC v. Brigham Young University, No. 2:12-cv-00970-TS (D. Utah). The court found that two attorneys, Chad Pehrson and Robert S. Clark, violated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b) by failing to conduct a reasonable inquiry. The order assessed a $2,000 penalty against Mr. Pehrson and a $1,000 penalty against Mr. Clark, each payable to the court within 30 days. It also imposed a continuing legal education condition: two CLE courses related to the ethical use of AI in the legal profession, with proof of completion due within six months.
First, the order names the tools. ClearBrief, Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini all appear in the order’s text. Courts have generally been indifferent to which product produced the fabrication, and this order breaks that pattern. If your AI use policy distinguishes a citation-checking tool from a general chatbot, an order naming both categories in one sentence is worth reading closely.
Second, the defect was not only invented cases. The order describes “a citation to a nonexistent case and several citations to cases that do not support and are unrelated to the stated propositions.” The second category is harder to catch, because a pass that only confirms a case exists and that the reporter cite is correct will clear it. A real case cited for a proposition it does not hold is still a Rule 11(b)(2) problem.
Third, the sanction was imposed on the court’s own initiative through an order to show cause, with a hearing held September 2, 2026. The court found the violation “[b]ased on Counsels’ admissions at the show cause hearing.” The court also wrote that it “takes misuse of AI, and the harm flowing therefrom, very seriously.” There is no disciplinary referral and no client notification requirement in the order.
What did Florida’s Sixth District do in Ulysse v. Vineland Investment Partners?
On September 10, 2026, the Sixth District Court of Appeal of Florida decided Ulysse v. Vineland Investment Partners Phase II, LLC, No. 6D2025-2767. Judge Smith wrote for a panel that included Chief Judge Traver and Judge Stargel. The court affirmed and then turned to the brief. It found that “seven of the cases cited in Ulysse’s Amended Initial Brief, which he cites a total of at least twenty times, do not exist.” The appellant was self-represented.
No sanction was imposed. The court directed that “Ulysse is directed to show cause within ten days of the issuance of this opinion why he should not be sanctioned,” and identified the sanction it had in mind: “Potential sanctions include the imposition of a requirement that a member of the Florida Bar in good standing review and sign any future filings in this Court.” The court also observed that “it is not the function of the Court to rebrief an appeal.”
That remedy, prefiling review rather than money, is the one worth noting. A pro se litigant with no assets is not deterred by a fee award. An order that no further filing is accepted without a licensed signature is. If you are opposing a self-represented litigant whose brief will not survive a citation check, that is the relief to ask for.
The rule text behind both orders
| Provision | Operative language, quoted | Source read |
|---|---|---|
| Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b) | “By presenting to the court a pleading, written motion, or other paper … an attorney or unrepresented party certifies that to the best of the person’s knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances” | law.cornell.edu |
| Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b)(2) | “the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law” | law.cornell.edu |
| Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c)(3) | “On its own, the court may order an attorney, law firm, or party to show cause why conduct specifically described in the order has not violated Rule 11(b).” | law.cornell.edu |
| Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c)(4) | “A sanction imposed under this rule must be limited to what suffices to deter repetition of the conduct or comparable conduct by others similarly situated. The sanction may include nonmonetary directives; an order to pay a penalty into court” | law.cornell.edu |
| Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c)(2) | “it must not be filed or be presented to the court if the challenged paper, claim, defense, contention, or denial is withdrawn or appropriately corrected within 21 days after service or within another time the court sets” | law.cornell.edu |
| Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 128.7(c)(2) | “On its own motion, the court may enter an order describing the specific conduct that appears to violate subdivision (b) and directing an attorney, law firm, or party to show cause why it has not violated subdivision (b), unless, within 21 days of service of the order to show cause, the challenged paper, claim, defense, contention, allegation, or denial is withdrawn or appropriately corrected.” | california.public.law and codes.findlaw.com, both agreeing |
| 22 NYCRR 130-1.1(c) | conduct is frivolous if “it is completely without merit in law and cannot be supported by a reasonable argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law” or if it “asserts material factual statements that are false” | law.cornell.edu |
| 22 NYCRR 130-1.2 | “The court may award costs or impose sanctions or both only upon a written decision setting forth the conduct on which the award or imposition is based … In no event shall the amount of sanctions imposed exceed $10,000 for any single occurrence of frivolous conduct.” | law.cornell.edu |
The safe harbor divergence that decides whether you can fix it
Keep the three systems separate. They do not behave the same way when the court moves first.
In federal court, the 21-day withdrawal window in Rule 11(c)(2) is written into the provision governing a motion by a party. Rule 11(c)(3) lets the court issue a show cause order on its own and contains no correction window. That is the posture Beus Gilbert arose in, and it is why the correction the court described did not avoid a penalty.
California is different, and this is the sharpest point in the piece. CCP 128.7(c)(2) gives the responding party 21 days after service of a court-issued order to show cause to withdraw or correct. Two independent California sources read today agree on that language word for word. A California lawyer who receives a sua sponte OSC has a cure period a federal lawyer in the same position does not.
New York’s Part 130 has no safe harbor at all. It caps sanctions at $10,000 per occurrence of frivolous conduct and requires a written decision setting out the conduct, why it was frivolous, and why the amount is appropriate. Do not import a federal or California cure expectation into a New York application.
Worked example: counting the deadlines in this week’s orders
- Beus Gilbert payment. Order signed Wednesday, September 9, 2026. Thirty days forward is Friday, October 9, 2026. Both penalties are due to the court by that date.
- Beus Gilbert CLE proof. Six months forward from September 9, 2026 is Tuesday, March 9, 2027. CLE seats for AI ethics programming fill; calendar the registration, not the deadline.
- Ulysse show cause. Opinion issued Thursday, September 10, 2026. Ten days forward is Sunday, September 20, 2026. Florida’s rule for computing a period ending on a weekend was not verified for this article, so treat the operative date as the earlier of the two possibilities and file by Friday, September 18, 2026.
- A hypothetical California cure. If a California superior court served a CCP 128.7(c)(2) order to show cause on Friday, September 18, 2026, the 21-day correction window closes Friday, October 9, 2026. Withdraw or correct the offending paper inside that window and the statute says the sanction does not follow.
Drafting-ready text
Two blocks: a declaration for a federal filing where you want the verification record in front of the judge before anyone asks, and the response you file inside a California 21-day window.
DECLARATION OF COUNSEL REGARDING CITATION VERIFICATION
I, [NAME], declare:
1. I am an attorney licensed to practice in [STATE] and admitted before
this Court. I am counsel of record for [PARTY]. I make this
declaration of my own personal knowledge.
2. Before filing the accompanying [BRIEF], I personally confirmed each
authority cited in it. For every case, I retrieved the full text of
the decision from [SOURCE], confirmed the reporter citation and the
pinpoint page, read the passage supporting the proposition for which
the case is cited, and confirmed the subsequent history.
3. For every statute, rule, and regulation cited, I confirmed the
current operative language against [SOURCE] as of [DATE].
4. [If applicable:] Generative artificial intelligence was used in the
preparation of this filing for [drafting / summarization / citation
checking]. No citation in this filing was taken from an AI output
without the independent verification described in paragraph 2.
5. A log of the verification described above is maintained in this
firm's file for this matter and can be produced at the Court's
request.
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States
of America that the foregoing is true and correct.
Executed on [DATE] at [CITY, STATE].
_____________________________
[NAME]RESPONSE TO ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE AND NOTICE OF CORRECTION
[Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 128.7(c)(2)]
TO THE COURT: Responding party submits this response to the Order to
Show Cause served on [DATE], and gives notice that the challenged
paper has been corrected within the 21 days allowed by Code of Civil
Procedure section 128.7, subdivision (c)(2).
1. The Order to Show Cause was served on [DATE]. The twenty-first day
after service is [DATE]. This response and the corrected filing are
served and filed on or before that date.
2. The Court identified the following specific conduct: [QUOTE THE
ORDER VERBATIM].
3. Responding party has withdrawn the following: [LIST EACH CITATION,
CONTENTION, OR ALLEGATION BY PAGE AND LINE].
4. Responding party has corrected the following: [LIST EACH
CORRECTION, IDENTIFYING THE AUTHORITY SUBSTITUTED AND THE SOURCE
AT WHICH ITS FULL TEXT WAS READ].
5. Because the challenged material has been withdrawn or appropriately
corrected within the period allowed by section 128.7(c)(2), no
sanction should issue.
Dated: [DATE] _____________________________
[NAME], Attorney for [PARTY]Pre-filing checklist
- Pull the full text of every cited case from a primary source. Reading a headnote or an AI summary is not verification.
- Confirm the reporter citation and the pinpoint page against the retrieved text, not against the draft.
- Read the cited passage and confirm it states the proposition. Beus Gilbert turned in part on real cases cited for propositions they did not support.
- Check subsequent history for every case, including any case you have cited before.
- Verify every statute, rule, and regulation against its current text on the issuing body’s own site or an equivalent primary source, and date the check.
- Check the judge’s individual practices or standing order for an AI disclosure or certification requirement before you file, not after.
- If you receive a sua sponte order to show cause, identify the system you are in first. Federal Rule 11(c)(3) gives no correction window. CCP 128.7(c)(2) gives 21 days. New York Part 130 gives neither.
- Keep the verification log. An order to show cause is a bad time to reconstruct what you did.
Before the next brief goes out
LegalBriefsUSA runs a citation verification service for licensed attorneys and firms. Send us a brief that is already drafted, and every authority in it comes back with the full text retrieved, the pinpoint confirmed, the supporting passage quoted, and the subsequent history checked, with a log you can attach to a declaration if a court ever asks. We also do the same pass on briefs you receive, which is the duty California recognized in Noland v. Land of the Free. If you want the drafting and the verification in one engagement, that is how our white-label work is structured.
Authorities cited
Beus Gilbert PLLC v. Brigham Young University, No. 2:12-cv-00970-TS, ECF No. 385 (D. Utah Sept. 9, 2026) (Stewart, J.), read three times as the court’s own signed order in the document library at damiencharlotin.com, which redirects to websitedc.s3.amazonaws.com, with each read using a different extraction prompt, and independently corroborated by the full-text copy at law.justia.com, which agrees on the date, the judge, the $2,000 and $1,000 allocation, and the AI products named. Ulysse v. Vineland Investment Partners Phase II, LLC, No. 6D2025-2767 (Fla. 6th DCA Sept. 10, 2026) (Smith, J., with Traver, C.J., and Stargel, J.), read twice from the same document library with different extraction prompts, both reads agreeing on the seven nonexistent cases, the at-least-twenty citations, the ten-day show cause period and the prefiling review remedy. Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b), (b)(2), (c)(2), (c)(3) and (c)(4) at law.cornell.edu. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. section 128.7(b)(2), (c)(1) and (c)(2) read at california.public.law and independently at codes.findlaw.com, both agreeing on the operative language. 22 NYCRR 130-1.1(a) and (c) and 130-1.2 at law.cornell.edu. Database counters read at damiencharlotin.com on September 18, 2026, reflecting its September 14, 2026 update, and confirmed on a second read: 2,041 total, United States 1,395, Canada 217, Australia 111, pro se 1,174, lawyer 811, judge 32, expert 15.
Left out for lack of verification. Which of the two attorneys the CLE condition binds is not stated here, because two reads of the order disagreed on that point and the rule for this beat is to delete rather than hedge. The count of errors in the notice of errata described in the order is omitted for the same reason, having appeared in only one read. No independent press report or issuing-court copy of the Ulysse opinion was located, so that entry rests on two agreeing reads of the opinion document alone; searches of the Sixth District’s own opinion search returned a robots restriction and the Justia listing for that court had not reached September 2026. Neill-Fraser v Tasmania Parole Board (Supreme Court of Tasmania, Sept. 15, 2026) appears in the database for this window but is linked only to a news report rather than to the court’s order, so nothing is stated about it beyond its existence, and it is outside this beat’s United States scope. Florida’s own rule for computing a period that ends on a weekend was not verified today and no statement is made about it. The CourtListener connector remains unavailable to this workflow, so no docket was consulted.
LegalBriefsUSA.com provides drafting and research support to licensed attorneys and law firms. This article is written for attorneys, is not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.