This post reads six months of the case tracker. It covers matters decided from April 1 to September 30, 2026, counted as of October 2, 2026. A matter is in the window when the date the tracker records for its order falls inside it.
Start with the limit. Orders reach the tracker as they surface in public databases, court websites, and dockets, and a recent order can take months to surface. Earlier periods have had longer to fill in. This window will keep growing after publication, so its totals should not be compared with older periods as if they measured a trend.
The six months in numbers
The tracker codes 188 matters in the window as a court sanction, bar discipline, or a formal warning. In each, a filing contained AI-generated or suspected AI-generated material and a court or disciplinary body issued a final order. Matters still pending, and matters in which a court responded without a sanction or warning, are not counted.
- Remedy. Court sanctions: 122. Formal warnings: 63. Bar discipline: 3.
- Court system. Federal courts and agencies: 117. State courts: 71.
- Filer. The tracker codes 57 as involving a self-represented filer. The rest include represented parties and matters whose record does not say whether the filer had counsel.
- Tool. The tracker records the AI tool as free text, often with the court’s own qualifications, so this post does not count matters by tool. The examples below include orders that name a tool, among them a legal research product.
The states with the most matters in the window are listed below. The ranking counts matters in state courts and in federal courts within a single state. Matters in the federal courts of appeals and in nationwide tribunals are not assigned to a state, so they are not in the list; Farris, discussed below, is one of them. Where states tie at the last place on the list, all of them are shown, so the list can run longer than five.
- New York: 18 matters
- California: 17 matters
- Texas: 12 matters
- Florida: 11 matters
- Illinois: 9 matters
- Indiana: 9 matters
What it costs
Among court sanctions and bar discipline in the window, 63 matters have a recorded amount that includes a parseable dollar figure. Those figures total $351,025, with a median of $1,750. The largest is $85,056, in LiveVideo.AI Corp v. Redstone.
A parseable figure is not the same as an AI penalty. Some orders shift fees in amounts set later or impose non-monetary remedies, and some awards rest on several grounds at once. The two largest figures in the window show the difference.
In LiveVideo.AI Corp v. Redstone, No. 24 Civ. 6290 (DEH) (S.D.N.Y. June 9, 2026), ECF No. 211 (tracker entry), the court ordered the plaintiff and its counsel to pay $85,056 in fees and costs under 28 U.S.C. § 1927 and its inherent power. The court found the motions meritless on three grounds. They were filed in violation of an existing filing injunction. They repeated arguments the court had already rejected. And “each of the motions appears to have been drafted by AI, contains hallucinated, non-existent quotations, and provides no real authority to support the arguments made within.” Apparent AI drafting was one ground among three.
In Reaves Law Firm, PLLC v. Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, No. 2:25-cv-2623 (W.D. Tenn. June 2, 2026), ECF No. 37 (tracker entry), the plaintiff was itself a law firm. The court imposed Rule 11 sanctions for its filings. Its order opens: “This case presents a study in the perils that can result from the unchecked use of artificial intelligence in the drafting of legal filings.” A later order fixed the defendants’ fees at $45,763, owed jointly by the firm and the person who signed the filings. The court also sent its order to every judge in the district and to the state’s disciplinary counsel.
Named tools, including legal ones
Some orders in the window name the tool, and the named tools are not limited to consumer chatbots.
In United States v. Farris, No. 25-5623 (6th Cir. Apr. 3, 2026) (tracker entry), appointed counsel admitted using AI to draft the appellate briefs; the court traced the principal brief to Westlaw’s CoCounsel through its file name. The Sixth Circuit denied compensation for the appeal, referred the matter to the Chief Judge for possible discipline, and sent the opinion to the Kentucky Bar Association’s disciplinary clerk. The court wrote that attorneys “should not utilize technology without knowing the ways in which it can be misused or contribute to inaccuracies,” and that this “remains true even when new tools are sponsored by trusted legal technology providers.”
In Shore v. Dorel Juvenile Group, Inc., No. 25-11232-LTS (D. Mass. May 12, 2026), ECF No. 35 (tracker entry), counsel used ChatGPT and Claude to finalize an opposition brief “with the intent to improve the brief’s writing style and coherence,” and the tools “re-wrote some of the quotations.” The court struck the brief, ordered a $2,500 payment to the defendant, and asked the responsible firm to report on the measures it would adopt.
In Youssian v. Village of Kings Point, 2026 NY Slip Op 26150 (Sup. Ct. Nassau County Sept. 9, 2026) (tracker entry), counsel conceded that the commencement papers contained hallucinated quotations and described an AI drafting tool embedded in Microsoft Word. The court imposed a $5,000 sanction under 22 NYCRR 130-1.1, awarded $10,000 in fees as a further sanction, struck the papers, and dismissed the action without prejudice. It rejected the argument that an amended pleading could cure the problem: “This Court concludes that the principle does not apply where the original pleading is permeated with fraud, and the fraud cannot simply be amended away.”
What the window suggests for firms
The patterns from the full docket hold in this window. Firms reviewing their AI policies may wish to consider:
- Tool approval is not verification. Farris involved a legal research product, and Shore involved general-purpose chatbots used only to polish writing. In both, quotations the tools produced or rewrote reached the court unchecked.
- The response to a show-cause order matters. In Youssian, the court tied the size of its sanction to counsel’s decision to press on after the problem was raised.
- Sanctions travel. Reaves went to every judge in the district and to disciplinary counsel; Farris went to a state bar.
How these orders apply to a particular firm’s practice is a question for counsel licensed in the relevant jurisdiction.
About these numbers
Each matter’s court, date, and outcome are sourced from public court records: court websites, the federal PACER system and the CourtListener RECAP archive, and state court reporters and portals. Matters reach the tracker largely through public databases of AI-related citation incidents (see the methodology), so where an order does not itself mention AI, the AI classification comes from that outside source rather than from the court record. Every figure above is computed from the tracker when the site is built, so a reversal, a vacated sanction, or a newly found order changes it on the next deploy. The figures reflect the record as of October 2, 2026. Orders can be appealed, modified, or vacated after they are recorded; verify a matter’s current status against the underlying docket before acting on it.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice.