Skip to main content
NOPE
Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

Moscow Region court rules dismissal of programmer whose employer accused him of abusing AI unlawful and awards him over 1.2 million roubles

A court in Moscow Region, Russia, ruled in favour of a programmer whose employer had disciplined him and ended his employment, according to court materials reported by TASS on 27 October 2026 and relayed by regional outlets. In court the company's representative said the programmer had performed his duties improperly and had abused artificial intelligence when doing work tasks, which the company said its analytical reports showed. The programmer said the employer had pressed him to leave from September 2025 after he refused to sign an agreement moving him to hourly pay, and that he faced five internal inspections and three disciplinary penalties he disputed. The court found that the employer had ignored his written explanations, partly upheld his claim, changed the recorded ground of dismissal to termination at the employee's initiative, adjusted the dismissal date, lifted the penalties and awarded him over 1.2 million roubles in average earnings for the period of forced absence, plus moral damages and costs.

AI system
Unidentified AI tools
Occurred
Sept 2025
Reported
27 October 2026
Event location
Russia
What the AI did
Relation unknown
Reported harm
Professional HarmFinancial Loss
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Work · Justice
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account
3 claims: 3 reported. 3 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

AI system as recorded: Unidentified AI tools that, according to the employer's representative in court, the programmer abused when doing work tasks; no tool is named and no AI output is described

What Happened

The dispute. According to court materials reported by TASS, a programmer sued his former employer in Moscow Region to have his dismissal declared unlawful. He said the employer had not shown him his job description and, from September 2025, had pressed him to leave after he refused to sign a supplementary agreement moving him to hourly pay. He said he faced five internal inspections and three disciplinary penalties that he disputed, that his advance was not paid in full and that he was threatened with forced dismissal.

The AI accusation. The company's representative told the court that the programmer performed his duties improperly and abused artificial intelligence when doing work tasks, which the company said its analytical reports confirmed. After a meeting, the programmer refused to work from his personal laptop and notified the employer of downtime through the employer's fault.

The ruling. The court found that the employer had ignored the programmer's written explanations and had not assessed them properly, although their supposed absence was one of the grounds for a reprimand. It partly upheld the claim, changed the ground of dismissal to termination at the employee's initiative, corrected the dismissal date, lifted the penalties and ordered payment of over 1.2 million roubles in average earnings for the period of forced absence, plus moral damages and legal costs.

What is not known. The reports do not name the court, the company or the AI tools, do not say what the analytical reports contained, and do not give the date of the dismissal or of the decision. The decision itself was not read; every report relays TASS.

Reported harm

The programmer was disciplined and dismissed after his employer accused him of abusing AI and performing poorly; the court found the dismissal unlawful and awarded over 1.2 million roubles in lost average earnings (TASS from court materials).

How Harm Occurred

The employer cited the programmer's alleged abuse of AI tools, along with improper performance, in disciplining and dismissing him; the court found the dismissal unlawful.

Outcome

Resolved

The court partly upheld the programmer's claim: it changed the ground of dismissal to termination at the employee's initiative (Labour Code art. 77(1)(3)), adjusted the dismissal date, lifted the disciplinary penalties and ordered the employer to pay over 1.2 million roubles in average earnings for the period of forced absence, plus moral damages and legal costs (TASS from court materials, 27 October 2026). The court, the date of the decision and whether it was appealed are not reported.

What remains unknown

  • The court, the company, the date of the dismissal and the date of the decision.
  • What the employer's analytical reports showed and which AI tools the programmer was said to have used.
  • Whether the decision has entered into force or was appealed.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The harm is the employer's response to the programmer's alleged AI use. According to the court materials reported by TASS, the company's representative told the court that the programmer abused artificial intelligence when doing work tasks, citing analytical reports, alongside improper performance of his duties; the court then found the dismissal unlawful. No source describes any AI output or says what the AI use consisted of, so no relation between an AI system and the programmer is established and the relation is unknown under the consequential-response exemption.

3 claims: 3 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported In court, the employer's representative said the programmer had performed his duties improperly and had abused artificial intelligence when doing work tasks, which the company said its analytical reports confirmed.

Causal attribution. The employer's position as recorded in the court materials reported by TASS; the analytical reports were not described or examined.

  • osnmedia.ru(opens in new tab) supports · Russian
    'Работодатель обвинял сотрудника в злоупотреблении искусственным интеллектом в ходе выполнения задач.'; 'Позиция компании в суде сводилась к тому, что бывший сотрудник выполнял обязанности ненадлежащим образом и злоупотреблял ИИ, что подтверждали аналитические отчеты.'
  • vmo24.ru(opens in new tab) supports · Russian
    'Представитель компании настаивал, что сотрудник ненадлежаще исполнял обязанности и злоупотреблял использованием ИИ — это якобы подтверждали аналитические отчёты.'
Reported The programmer said the employer had pressed him to leave from September 2025 after he refused to sign an agreement moving him to hourly pay, and that he faced five internal inspections and three disciplinary penalties he disputed.

Causal attribution. The programmer's own account in his claim, as reported from the court materials.

  • vmo24.ru(opens in new tab) supports · Russian
    'Истец утверждал, что работодатель не ознакомил его с должностной инструкцией, а в сентябре 2025 года принуждал к увольнению из‑за отказа подписать допсоглашение о переходе на почасовую оплату труда.'; 'По словам программиста, в отношении него провели пять служебных проверок и вынесли три дисциплинарных взыскания, с которыми он не согласился.'
  • newsroom24.ru(opens in new tab) supports · Russian
    'По словам истца, на него завели пять служебных проверок и вынесли три дисциплинарных взыскания, с которыми он не согласился.'
Reported The court found that the employer had ignored the programmer's written explanations, partly upheld his claim, changed the ground of dismissal to termination at the employee's initiative, adjusted the dismissal date, lifted the disciplinary penalties and awarded him over 1.2 million roubles in average earnings for the period of forced absence.

Causal attribution. The decision as relayed by TASS from the court materials (one origin); the decision text itself was not read.

  • osnmedia.ru(opens in new tab) supports · Russian
    'По материалам суда, с которыми ознакомилось ТАСС, в пользу истца взыскано более 1,2 млн рублей — это средний заработок за период вынужденного прогула.'; 'Суд выяснил: письменные объяснения работника остались без рассмотрения и должной оценки'
  • newsroom24.ru(opens in new tab) supports · Russian
    'Все выговоры с программиста сняты, ему компенсировали свыше 1,2 млн рублей среднего заработка за время вынужденного прогула.'
  • finance.rambler.ru(opens in new tab) supports · Russian
    'Изменить формулировку основания увольнения на увольнение по п. 3 ч. 1 ст. 77 ТК РФ (расторжение трудового договора по инициативе работника) и дату увольнения'

Sources

4 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in Russian by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-28 and translated by the research agent (an AI) into English; no human translator or reviewer was involved. Federal news service report, 27 October 2026, citing court materials seen by TASS; HTTP 200. Applies to s1.

Read in Russian by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-28 and translated by the research agent (an AI) into English; no human translator or reviewer was involved. Moscow Region newspaper report, 27 October 2026, citing TASS and case materials; HTTP 200. Applies to s2.

Read in Russian by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-28 and translated by the research agent (an AI) into English; no human translator or reviewer was involved. Regional news site report, 27 October 2026, citing TASS; HTTP 200. Applies to s3.

Read in Russian by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-28 and translated by the research agent (an AI) into English; no human translator or reviewer was involved. Rambler republication of Vechernyaya Moskva, 27 October 2026, quoting the decision as relayed by TASS; HTTP 200. Applies to s4.

Event countries: Russia. Affected-person countries: Russia. Court countries: Russia.

The reports describe a court in Moscow Region (Podmoskovye) deciding the programmer's claim against his former employer; the employment dispute is reported as taking place there. No city is given.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-28: Published as a consequential-response case: according to court materials reported by TASS, an employer accused a programmer of abusing AI at work, disciplined and dismissed him, and a Moscow Region court found the dismissal unlawful and awarded him over 1.2 million roubles. The programmer and the company are not named in any source.

People described

A programmer in Moscow Region who was disciplined and dismissed by his employer

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

One person: the programmer whose dismissal the court found unlawful.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#dismissal#workplace-ai#labour-court#russia#consequential-response

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Moscow Region court rules dismissal of programmer whose employer accused him of abusing AI unlawful and awards him over 1.2 million roubles. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-moscow-region-court-rules-programmers-dismissal-unlawful-after-employer-accused-him-of-abusing-ai

BibTeX

@misc{2025_moscow_region_court_rules_programmers_dismissal_unlawful_after_employer_accused_him_of_abusing_ai,
  title = {Moscow Region court rules dismissal of programmer whose employer accused him of abusing AI unlawful and awards him over 1.2 million roubles},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-moscow-region-court-rules-programmers-dismissal-unlawful-after-employer-accused-him-of-abusing-ai}
}

Related cases

Medium Unidentified AI tools

Moscow: courts reinstate a sewing-company manager dismissed after refusing two-hour days that her employer tied to introducing AI, T-Zhurnal reports

T-Zhurnal (T-Bank's magazine) reported on 16 September 2026, in a lawyer's account of two court decisions, that the sewing company employing a Moscow resident as a full-time manager began cost-cutting in mid-2024 and introduced neural-network and AI technology, and told her that from July she would work 09:00 to 11:00, eight hours a week, with pay reduced in proportion. She refused and was dismissed for refusing to continue work after changes to her contract terms. The employer said that since it began introducing AI many of the manager's tasks were done by programs and full-time work was no longer needed, and that she had worked badly; she said the change was a disguised redundancy and that her post was to be cut and partly replaced by programs and AI. According to the article, the district court (case 2-1354/2025) found that other employees confirmed the cost-cutting and that the manager's work was planned to be fully replaced by neural networks, held that the refusal of part-time work had to be treated as a redundancy, and ordered her reinstatement with back pay and moral damages. The Moscow City Court (case 33-34099/2025) upheld the reinstatement and reduced the back-pay calculation; the court's case portal lists that appeal as concluded on 24 July 2025. The amounts are not given.

Medium DeepSeek

Moscow court upholds a sales director's dismissal for disclosing trade secrets, including uploading company reports to DeepSeek, and rejects her severance claim

A Moscow district court upheld an engineering company's dismissal of its head of sales for disclosing trade secrets, according to RAPSI and Pravo.ru reports of 27 July 2026. The grounds included uploading protected internal reports to the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek, forwarding company documents to her personal email and disclosing strategic information to a supplier. The court held that uploading trade secrets to DeepSeek is in itself a disclosure. She had sought a dismissal by mutual agreement and a contractual severance payment of 5 million roubles. The court rejected both, annulled a separate reprimand and awarded her compensation for moral harm. The decision was not yet final.

Medium Unidentified AI tool

Ninth Circuit fines and suspends two immigration lawyers over briefs with AI-hallucinated citations and denials of AI use; immigration board follows

On 3 June 2026 the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit fined immigration attorneys Mike Singh Sethi and William Rounds $2,500 each and suspended both from practice before the court for six months. Briefs filed in an asylum petition for review cited two cases that do not exist and attributed quotations to opinions that do not contain them. In a motion to correct, the attorneys called the errors typographical, and at oral argument Rounds twice said AI was not used. In their response to the court's order to show cause, they conceded that the errors were probably the product of unauthorised AI use by the firm's unlicensed brief writers and a failure to check citations. The court said the suspension was owed to their repeated failure of candour. The Board of Immigration Appeals then suspended Sethi from practice before the Board, the immigration courts and the Department of Homeland Security for six months, effective 13 June 2026, and designated that decision as a precedent on 1 October 2026.

Low Unidentified AI drafting tool

Paraíba, Brazil: judge fines a lawyer R$32,800 over hidden AI commands in a petition, G1 reports; state bar later suspends two lawyers in such cases

A judge of the 5th Mixed Court of Sousa, Paraíba, found hidden instructions aimed at artificial intelligence tools spread over seven pages of a lawyer's motion for clarification in a public-competition case in June 2026, including an order to ignore impartiality and a note calling it a test of whether the judge used only AI to decide. The judge fined the lawyer two penalties of R$16,400 (R$32,800 in total) for bad-faith litigation and contempt of the court's dignity, and referred the case to the Paraíba bar (OAB-PB) and the state prosecutors, G1 reports. The defence said the commands were not inserted deliberately and blamed an error in exporting a file prepared with AI support. An appeal judge refused to suspend the fines on 30 June, the trial judge kept them on reconsideration, and in July, G1 reports, the OAB-PB preventively suspended two lawyers after opening procedures into two hidden-command cases, one of them the Sousa case.

If you or someone you know is struggling, free and confidential support is available. Find a helpline near you at Signpost.

Back to all incidents