Alberti v. District of Columbia
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia · D.D.C. · District of Columbia bar guidance
Verified April 26, 2026
- Citation
- Alberti v. District of Columbia, No. 1:24-cv-03219-JEB (D.D.C. Feb. 10, 2026) (Boasberg, C.J.)
- Decided
- February 10, 2026
Summary
Plaintiff Tabitha Alberti, an MPD officer, sued the District of Columbia for sexual harassment, retaliation, and hostile work environment. While preparing to rule on the District's motion to dismiss, Chief Judge James E. Boasberg discovered that plaintiff's counsel's Opposition brief was "riddled with citations to cases that do not exist and references to paragraphs in the Complaint that did not support the propositions for which they were cited." At an October 16, 2025 hearing, plaintiff's counsel acknowledged that artificial intelligence was used to draft the brief and that no one at the firm verified the accuracy of its contents before filing. The Court permitted an Amended Opposition and Amended Reply, and addressed counsel's conduct through a separate motion for attorney fees (ECF No. 29).
- AI tool:
- Unspecified generative AI
What sanction did the court impose?
The Court granted in part and denied in part the motion to dismiss on the merits, dismissing eight of fourteen counts. As to the AI-generated fabrications, the Court referred the sanctions question to a separate attorney fee motion (Am. Fee Mot., ECF No. 29) rather than ruling in this Memorandum Opinion; the specific monetary or disciplinary outcome of that fee motion is not stated in the February 10, 2026 opinion.
Why does Alberti v. District of Columbia matter for law firms using AI?
Alberti is a useful exhibit for the proposition that even Chief Judges of busy district courts now routinely catch AI-fabricated citations on their own review of opposition briefs, well before opposing counsel exhausts every footnote. Judge Boasberg flagged the problem himself while preparing to rule, forced plaintiff’s counsel to re-file an Amended Opposition, and split off the sanctions question into a separate fee proceeding, a procedural pattern managing partners should expect to see repeated. The case also illustrates the collateral cost of an unverified filing: an already sprawling fourteen-count discrimination case generated additional briefing, a hearing, and a fee motion before the merits were even decided.
Sources
Further reading
- Document mirror (Damien Charlotin hallucination database, Westlaw printout)
- CourtListener search (aggregator)
Source PDF is a Westlaw printout mirrored from the Damien Charlotin hallucination database. We are working to add the underlying court docket (PACER, CourtListener, or court website) as a second source.
- The specific outcome of the separate fee motion (ECF No. 29) is not contained in the February 10, 2026 Memorandum Opinion. Monetary amount, if any, and any disciplinary referral remain to be confirmed against the fee-motion order when it issues or is located on PACER/CourtListener.
- CourtListener docket URL not directly retrieved during verification; the link above is a search query rather than a confirmed docket page.