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Citation Safe

Sanctions — Week of 2025-07-21

19 AI-hallucination sanctions decided between 2025-07-21 and 2025-07-27 (ISO week 2025-W30). Every ruling below is sourced from the public docket — case name, decided date, outcome, AI tool implicated (when named), and any monetary penalty language pulled verbatim from the ruling.

Week at a glance

Total rulings
19
With monetary penalty
5 of 19
Courts
18
ISO week
2025-W30

Outcomes this week

  • Warning5
  • Appeal Dismissed With Prejudice; Declared Vexatious Litigant1
  • Attorney Ordered To Disgorge Payment And Pay Monetary Sanctions1
  • Monetary Sanction Equivalent To One Month Of Minimum Wage1
  • Monetary Sanction; Mandatory Cle In Ethics/legal Technology1
  • Motion Dismissed, Ordered To Pay Opposing Counsel's Fees (6k) And Fine (2k)1
  • Opinion Withdrawn By Judge1
  • Order To Undergo Cle1
  • Plaintiff's Motion Denied; Warning Issued For Future Filings1
  • Public Reprimand, Disqualification From The Case, And Referral To The Bar1
  • Recom'tion To Dismiss Plaintiff's Complaint With Prejudice1
  • Relevant Pleadings Ignored; Order To Show Cause1
  • The Court Imposed A Requirement For Future Filings To Include A Written Representation Of Citation Accuracy.1

AI tool implicated

  • Implied10
  • Unidentified6
  • ChatGPT2
  • Copilot1

This week’s read-across

19 rulings landed on the docket between 2025-07-21 and 2025-07-27. The most common recorded outcome this week was Warning (5 of 19). Of the 19 rulings, 5 carried an explicit monetary penalty in the ruling text.

Implied was the most-implicated AI tool this week (courts rarely require the attorney to name the tool by product name on the record; “Implied” means the ruling described an AI-generated brief without a product name).

The pattern each week is remarkably stable: existence failures (Layer 1) dominate. Attorneys file briefs containing citations that do not exist in any primary source — usually because a general-purpose LLM fabricated the citation and no deterministic pre-filing check caught it. Every ruling below is a preventable filing. See /verify for the pre-filing tool.

All rulings, week of 2025-07-21

In re Boy

CA Illinois · Decided 2025-07-21 · Attorney ordered to disgorge payment and pay monetary sanctions · Penalty: 7925 USD · AI tool: Unidentified.

Read the full teardown →

Courts represented this week

Nearby weeks

← Prev: 2025-W29 (10)Next: 2025-W31 (20) →

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Informational only. Not legal advice. Data derived from public court records; corrections at /contact.