Sanctions — Week of 2026-01-12

38 AI-hallucination sanctions decided between 2026-01-12 and 2026-01-18 (ISO week 2026-W03). 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: 38
With monetary penalty: 4 of 38
Courts: 30
ISO week: 2026-W03

Week over week: 38 sanctions filed the week of 2026-01-12 vs 28 sanctions the prior week (2026-01-05) — up 10 from the prior week.

Outcomes this week

Warning14
Order To Show Cause4
Monetary Sanction2
Adverse Costs Order1
Adverse Costs Order; Requirement To Speak To Bar Associations Or Law Students About Experience1
Apology From Counsel1
Arguments Ignored1
Citations Struck; Monetary Sanctions; Bar Referral1
Motion For Sanctions Denied1
Recommended Dismissal With Prejudice1
Revocation Of Pro Hac Vice Status, Striking Of The Brief1
Warning; Order To Retain Local Counsel1

AI tool implicated

Implied29
Unidentified5
Bloomberg Law1
ChatGPT1
Lexis Assist1
OpenAI ChatGPT-4o1

This week’s read-across

38 rulings landed on the docket between 2026-01-12 and 2026-01-18. The most common recorded outcome this week was Warning (14 of 38). Of the 38 rulings, 4 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.

Nearby weeks

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