Sanctions — Week of 2026-03-16

40 AI-hallucination sanctions decided between 2026-03-16 and 2026-03-22 (ISO week 2026-W12). 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: 40
With monetary penalty: 11 of 40
Courts: 22
ISO week: 2026-W12

Week over week: 40 sanctions filed the week of 2026-03-16 vs 33 sanctions the prior week (2026-03-09) — up 7 from the prior week.

Outcomes this week

Warning10
Adverse Costs Order3
Adverse Costs Order; Appeal Dismissed1
Affirmed1
Appellant's Brief Stricken; Appellant's Appeal Dismissed; Bar Referral; Suspension1
Brief Struck1
Brief Struck; Adverse Costs Order; Case Dismissed With Prejudice1
Cost-related Relief Refused In Part Because Of Ai Misuse1
Costs1
Factor In Dismissing With Prejudice1
Monetary Fine1
Monetary Penalty1
Monetary Sanction1
Monetary Sanction & Formal Admonishment1
Monetary Sanction; Bar Referral; Counsel Disqualified In This Case; Order To Notify The Judgment In Other Cases; Cle; Letter Of Apology1
Order To Show Cause1
Petition Struck1
Report Withdrawn1
Sanctions Motion Denied1
Upcoming Sanctions1

AI tool implicated

Implied24
Unidentified11
ChatGPT3
Grammarly, ChatGPT, and Gemini1
Perplexity.AI1

This week’s read-across

40 rulings landed on the docket between 2026-03-16 and 2026-03-22. The most common recorded outcome this week was Warning (10 of 40). Of the 40 rulings, 11 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.