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NOPE
Medium reported severity

Three lawyers sanctioned after filing AI-generated fictitious citations

A Wyoming federal court fined three lawyers a total of $5,000 and removed the drafting lawyer from Wadsworth v. Walmart after a January 2025 filing cited eight nonexistent cases. The order identifies MX2.law as the drafting tool, records failure to verify its output and credits subsequent remedial steps.

AI system
MX2.law
Morgan & Morgan
Occurred
22 Jan 2025 to 24 Feb 2025
Reported
24 February 2025
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Communicated with the person · Acted on the person’s behalf
Reported harm
Legal HarmProfessional Harm
Whose AI use
Their own AI use · Someone else’s AI use
Setting
Justice · Work
Evidence
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source
2 claims: 2 documented. 1 open question
People reported harmed
At least 3 people

Reported harm

The court imposed $3,000, $1,000 and $1,000 penalties and revoked the drafting lawyer’s admission to this case.

What remains unknown

  • Underlying model, precise drafting day and eventual payment of penalties are unknown.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: supported. Court order identifies the tool and records the drafter’s prompts.

2 claims: 2 documented. What the statuses mean

Documented The order records a 22 January filing containing eight fictitious citations generated with MX2.law and not verified before filing.

Causal attribution. The order records counsel’s admissions and the court’s findings.

Documented The court fined three lawyers a total of $5,000, removed the drafter from the case and treated withdrawal, candour, fee reimbursement and new safeguards as mitigation.

Causal attribution. Sanctions address professional verification duties; the record does not assign sole responsibility to AI.

Sources

1 source inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: United States.

Wyoming federal court. Drafting location and lawyers’ residence not established.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-29: A filed order establishes the sanctions and AI-assisted drafting, with mitigation retained.

People reported harmed in this case

At least 3 people

1 AI participant · 2 other people harmed

Three individually sanctioned lawyers; one drafted with AI. Clients and institutional costs are not included in this minimum.

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

Cite this case

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

APA

NOPE. (2026). Three lawyers sanctioned after filing AI-generated fictitious citations. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-wadsworth-lawyers-sanctioned-ai-fabricated-citations

BibTeX

@misc{2025_wadsworth_lawyers_sanctioned_ai_fabricated_citations,
  title = {Three lawyers sanctioned after filing AI-generated fictitious citations},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-wadsworth-lawyers-sanctioned-ai-fabricated-citations}
}

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