Sanctions — Week of 2026-01-19

36 AI-hallucination sanctions decided between 2026-01-19 and 2026-01-25 (ISO week 2026-W04). 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: 36
With monetary penalty: 3 of 36
Courts: 23
ISO week: 2026-W04

Week over week: 36 sanctions filed the week of 2026-01-19 vs 38 sanctions the prior week (2026-01-12) — down 2 from the prior week.

Outcomes this week

Warning11
Monetary Sanction2
Admonishment1
Arguments Struck; Warning1
Bar Referral1
Claim Dismissed1
Cle; Sworn Statement1
Counsel To Serve Opinion On Client And State Bar; Cle; Bar Referral1
Leave To Apply For Certiorari/prohibition Granted1
Misconduct Taken Into Account For Adverse Costs Order1
Monetary Penalty1
No Sanctions At This Time1
Order To Amend1
Order To File Conventional Hard-copy Source Documents For Every Cited Authority1
Order To Inform Client And Staff Of Errors1
Order To Show Cause1
Struck Filings1

AI tool implicated

Implied29
Unidentified6
ChatGPT1

This week’s read-across

36 rulings landed on the docket between 2026-01-19 and 2026-01-25. The most common recorded outcome this week was Warning (11 of 36). Of the 36 rulings, 3 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.