LLMHigh
Sixth Circuit Sanctioned Lawyers in Whiting v. City of Athens over Alleged Fake Appellate Citations in Briefs Reportedly Bearing Hallmarks of Hallucinations
- Occurred
- Mar 13, 2026
- Published
- Mar 27, 2026
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit sanctioned attorneys Van Irion and Russ Egli after reportedly finding more than two dozen fake citations and alleged factual misrepresentations in appellate briefs in Whiting v. City of Athens. The court asked whether generative AI had been used, but the attorneys reportedly did not answer that question. Public reporting described the filings as bearing hallmarks of AI hallucinations.
Developers
- Large language model developers
- Generative AI developers
Deployers
- Van Irion
- Russ Egli
Harmed parties
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
- City of Athens, Tennessee
- Epistemic integrity
- Judicial integrity
Classification
Category confidence: 90%
Severity confidence: 85%
Rationale: Attorneys sanctioned for AI hallucinations in legal briefs, resulting in court sanctions and potential legal consequences.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8