Not every mistake is attributable to an AI hallucination. But once a firm suffers a couple admonishments from the court — including one that cost the firm over $50K to make right — its lawyers have to redouble their effort to keep every filing above reproach. Because the moment anything looks off, opposing counsel will wonder if it’s the product of AI run amok and lax oversight.
And the court isn’t likely to give the accused firm the benefit of the doubt.
Gordon Rees became a cautionary example for AI hallucination mishaps after one of its attorneys submitted fabricated citations in a bankruptcy case last summer. In Jackson Hosp. & Clinic Inc., a judge issued an order to show cause why sanctions shouldn’t follow based upon a brief with “pervasive inaccurate, misleading, and fabricated citations, quotations, and representations of legal authority.” The firm reimbursed fees for lawyers inconvenienced by the error and threw itself on the mercy of the court and assured everyone that it had updated its AI policies to include a “cite checking policy.”
Fast forward to the present, and a recently filed brief in Huynh v. Redis Labs, claims that Gordon Rees has again submitted a brief with AI hallucinations. In a motion to compel battle entering its third round after the defendant represented by Gordon Rees failed to comply with the first two orders to compel. Despite earning monetary sanctions and a warning that terminating sanctions could follow, the defendant still hadn’t been deposed — canceling at the last minute attributed to a medical emergency — and the plaintiff, represented by Bach Mili LLP, filed a renewed motion.
Gordon Rees submitted its opposition and, in reply, Bach Mili claims that a lot of the citations don’t add up:
The distortions go directly to the governing standard for terminating sanctions. Defendants cite Doppes v. Bentley Motors, Inc. to argue termination is inappropriate where a party expresses willingness to comply. (Opp. at 7.) Doppes holds the opposite. The Court of Appeal concluded the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to impose terminating sanctions after repeated discovery violations and ineffective lesser sanctions, and directed entry of judgment as a sanction. (174 Cal.App.4th 967, 992-994.) Defendants invoke Collisson & Kaplan v. Hartunian for the proposition that terminating sanctions should be used sparingly, though that phrase does not appear in the opinion and the case affirmed striking the defendant’s answer for “lawyer game playing at its worst.” (Opp. at 4; 21 Cal.App.4th 1611, 1617.) They attribute to Biles v. Exxon Mobil Corp. a definition of willfulness that does not exist. (Opp. at 5.) They cite Rail Services of America v. State Comp. Ins. Fund for language that does not appear in the decision. (Id. at 4.) They represent Huh v. Wang and Corns v. Miller as excusing noncompliance based on medical emergency, though neither case stands for that proposition. These are not debatable characterizations. (Id. at 5.) They are reversals of holdings and quotations that do not exist.
The brief doesn’t explicitly say these issues were caused by AI research and drafting, but it does include the relevant local precedent holding that, “an attorney has a nondelegable duty to personally read and verify every cited case and that reliance on hallucinated authority renders a filing frivolous and sanctionable.”
“Defendants’ opposition is sanctionable on its face because it relies on false and misleading legal authority, misstates holdings, and fabricates quotations,” Bach Mili states. “This is not aggressive advocacy or sloppy research. It is the submission of false authority to the Court in violation of counsel’s most basic obligations.”
The reply also calls out a December 3, 2025 order in Villalovos-Gutierrez v. Pol, where Gordon Rees earned another reprimand for AI-hallucinations. U.S. Magistrate Judge Carolyn Delaney wrote in that order:
In more than one other instance, defendant’s case citations do not support the specific explanatory phrase presented alongside the citation. Counsel shall not file or otherwise present to the court any documents which contain AI-hallucinated citations or fictitious or non-existent legal citations. Counsel’s failure to confirm the existence of, as well as the accuracy and veracity of a case or other legal citation created by an AI tool or taken from another indirect source, is a potential ground for sanctions.
That’s December. That’s several months after Gordon Rees suffered their very public benchslapping in August. That’s after the firm promised its updated AI policy with stricter cite checking. But a cite-checking policy only works if people follow it, and if these allegations are accurate, whatever internal reforms the firm implemented either aren’t being followed or aren’t enough.
Also, according to the reply, the partner on Villalovos-Gutierrez was… the exact same partner in this case.
That doesn’t mean these cites are necessarily AI-generated. Taking careful liberties with the meaning of cases cases is a time-honored tradition that predates ChatGPT by a few centuries.
But a firm that’s already been dinged for hallucinations, and a partner who has already been separately dinged for hallucinations, filing a brief with a bunch of arguably incorrect cites. It does not take a machine learning scientist to think AI is at least arguably involved.
And that’s the real problem for Gordon Rees — or any firm caught in a hallucination kerfuffle — right now. Whether any specific citation was generated by AI — indeed, whether any specific citation is even wrong as opposed to merely debatable — opposing counsel now has every incentive to scrutinize any citation out of the firm with a jeweler’s loupe. The damage of a hallucination incident spills over into all of the firm’s litigation efforts and it will take a long time to repair that harm.
Earlier: Biglaw Firm ‘Profoundly Embarrassed’ After Submitting Court Filing Riddled With AI Hallucinations
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.