Sanctions — Week of 2026-05-18

41 AI-hallucination sanctions decided between 2026-05-18 and 2026-05-24 (ISO week 2026-W21). 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: 41
With monetary penalty: 5 of 41
Courts: 26
ISO week: 2026-W21

Week over week: 41 sanctions filed the week of 2026-05-18 vs 27 sanctions the prior week (2026-05-11) — up 14 from the prior week.

Outcomes this week

Warning7
Admonishment3
Monetary Sanction3
Order To Show Cause2
Adverse Costs Order1
Allowed To Correct Filing1
Brief Partly Struck1
Citation Treated As Unverified1
Dq From Case And Court (6 Months); Bar Referral1
Magistrate Recommended Sanctions1
Memorandum Struck From The Court Record And Removed1
Monetary Sanction; Bar Referral; Mandatory Audit Of Firm Knowledge Base; Adverse Costs Order1
Monetary Sanction; Cle1
No Sanctions In Circumstances1
Opinion Affirming1
Order To Provide Certification With Every Future Filing1
Public Admonishment; Sra Referral1
Warning (again)1

AI tool implicated

Implied33
Unidentified4
ChatGPT2
Fastcase1
LexisNexis AI1

This week’s read-across

41 rulings landed on the docket between 2026-05-18 and 2026-05-24. The most common recorded outcome this week was Warning (7 of 41). Of the 41 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.

Nearby weeks

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