Sanction teardown · E.D. Wisconsin, USA · 2025-09-18
Pelishek v. City of Sheboygan
What happened
In E.D. Wisconsin, USA, a filing relied on Westlaw's Quick Check and AI Case Search Tool to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:
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Misrepresented (Exhibits & Submissions)Proposed fact said City Attorney Adams denied Pelishek the opportunity to respond to a reporter; the cited email exchange contains no such denial.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Asserted a three-part prior restraint test and cited Milwaukee Police Ass’n v. Jones; the test cannot be found on the cited pages or in the case.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Portrayed Green v. Brennan as involving employer manufacturing a false narrative and pressuring resignation; Green concerned when a constructive discharge claim accrues.
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False Quotes (Case Law)Quoted Swetlik as saying 'falsified government records affecting taxpayer funds' are matters of public concern; the phrase appears nowhere in the case.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Cited a non-existent case to claim supervisory liability of mayor and city attorney in retaliation.
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False Quotes (Case Law)Altered Howell’s Monell standard by quoting language not in the opinion.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Stated Whittaker emphasized that public accusations eroding professional standing may justify resignation; Whittaker found no hostile environment.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Used Patton to support constructive discharge based on fabricated accusations and reputational harm; Patton focused on unwanted sexual contact and obsessive conduct.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Claimed Ulrey upheld a jury’s constructive discharge finding based on exclusion and retaliation; Ulrey rejected the constructive discharge claim.
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Misrepresented (Exhibits & Submissions)Attributed the word 'exactly' to Rendall-Araujo’s request that Pelishek repeat what was said; the proposed finding of fact did not state she used 'exactly.'
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Misrepresented (Exhibits & Submissions)Asserted Rendall-Araujo 'stated she was standing up to his racism'; the cited proposed findings do not support this.
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False Quotes (Case Law)Inserted 'any guidelines' where Harman said only 'standards.'
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Claimed AFGE held that chilling of protected speech is actionable; the case concerned sequestration and not the First Amendment.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Said Boumehdi held ostracism and workload manipulation support hostile environment; the case relied on repeated sexist comments and did not say that.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Asserted Stutler held 'retaliatory gagging' contributes to hostile environment; Stutler was not a hostile environment case and noted ostracism without material harm is insufficient.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Claimed Woods recognized that false accusations of racism can create a hostile environment; Woods addressed age/disability/FMLA discrimination and not hostile environment.
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Misrepresented (Exhibits & Submissions)Claimed Wolf defended Pelishek and said he did nothing wrong; none of the four cited PPMF paragraphs support this.
Which AI tool
Westlaw's Quick Check and AI Case Search Tool. Note: Charlotin's public database records tool attribution only where a court order, brief, or reporting on the matter states it explicitly; "unidentified" or "implied" means the record indicates AI use but does not name a specific product — we do not guess.
Outcome
Monetary Sanction (monetary penalty: 4500 USD.)
Additional detail
Case involved counsel sanctioned in Coomer v. Lindell. In the OSC Order, the court noted:"The fact that Kachouroff and DeMaster corrected some of their misrepresentations before the court or the defendants identified them would ordinarily mitigate their conduct. But the reality is that Kachouroff and DeMaster acted only after the Colorado District Court in Coomer v. Lindell noted similar misconduct. That so many misrepresentations persist supports the inference that counsel’s conduct was not mere negligence but an intentional effort to mislead the court."In her response to the OSC (available here), Counsel disclosed the Westlaw tools she had used.
How Citation Safe would have caught this
Citation Safe runs three deterministic layers before a brief is filed: (1) does the citation exist against CourtListener's database of published opinions, (2) if quoted, does that exact language appear in the source, (3) does the cited case actually support the proposition it is cited for. Fabricated case citations fail Layer 1. Fabricated or misattributed quotations fail Layer 2 even when the underlying case is real. Misrepresented holdings — a real case cited for a proposition it does not support — are the target of Layer 3. None of these checks involve asking another language model whether the citation looks right; they are lookups and text-matches against the actual source, which is why a hallucinated citation has to survive a direct lookup against the authoritative source — not another model's opinion — to earn a VERIFIED stamp; our measured false-verify rate is published live at /quality.
Check a brief before you file it → · See our live false-verify rate
Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.104622/gov.uscourts.wied.104622.184.0.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).