Mohamed Ali v. Saeed Osman
Supreme Court of North Dakota · N.D. Sup. Ct. · North Dakota bar guidance
Conduct
Self-represented appellant's brief had multiple fictitious or nonexistent citations; he corrected two but left numerous citations unrelated to their propositions.
Consequence
$1,000 sanction under N.D.R.App.P. 13 for fictitious citations; Rule 38 frivolous-appeal sanction denied; judgment summarily affirmed.
Lesson
Correcting two bad citations did not avoid a sanction; the Court based it on the multiple fictitious or nonexistent citation errors in the opening brief.
Verified September 28, 2026
- Citation
- Mohamed Ali v. Saeed Osman, 2026 ND 156, No. 20260029 (N.D. Aug. 6, 2026) (Fair McEvers, C.J.)
- Decided
- August 6, 2026
Summary
Mojahid Faroug Saeed Osman, self-represented, appealed a Cass County judgment granting a divorce to him and Sara Abdalrhman Mohamed Ali. He argued that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because he had obtained a Sudanese divorce certificate in 2022, and challenged the property division, the valuation of three assets, the award of the marital home, spousal support, and attorney's fees. Ali moved for $20,000 in appellate attorney's fees under N.D.R.App.P. 38, arguing the appeal was brought in bad faith and pointing out that Osman "cites cases that do not exist and quotes phrases that cannot be found in the authority provided." Osman responded, among other things, that his opening brief's citation errors did not render the appeal frivolous. The Court found that "while Osman corrected two nonexistent citations, he failed to acknowledge numerous other citations wholly unrelated to the propositions for which they were cited," and relied on N.D.R.App.P. 28(b)(2) and (7), which require citation to authority, Rule 28(l), which requires accuracy, and N.D.R.App.P. 13, which permits action against a person who fails to perform an act required by rule.
- AI tool:
- Unidentified (the opinion sanctions "multiple fictitious or nonexistent citation errors" but does not mention AI or attribute the errors to any tool)
- Sanction amount:
- $1,000 sanction payable by the appellant to the appellee (N.D.R.App.P. 13)
What sanction did the court impose?
In an opinion by Chief Justice Lisa Fair McEvers for a unanimous Court, the Court held that the district court had subject matter jurisdiction, upheld its refusal to recognize the Sudanese divorce certificate as a matter of comity, and summarily affirmed the divorce judgment under N.D.R.App.P. 35.1(a)(2) and (4). It concluded the appeal was "not completely frivolous" and declined to sanction under Rule 38, but held that "a sanction is appropriate based on the multiple fictitious or nonexistent citation errors in his opening brief" and awarded Ali sanctions from Osman of $1,000, citing City of Dickinson v. Helgeson, 2026 ND 34, and Stokka v. Stokka, 2026 ND 94, as prior awards for fake or nonexistent citations. Separately, the Court held that N.D.C.C. 14-09-29(4), which applies where a parent has perpetrated domestic violence, supports appellate attorney's fees, and remanded for the district court to decide whether such an award would cause Osman undue financial hardship and, if appropriate, its amount.
Why does Mohamed Ali v. Saeed Osman matter for law firms using AI?
Mohamed Ali v. Saeed Osman is mostly a comity decision: the North Dakota Supreme Court held that whether to recognize a foreign divorce decree is not a question of subject matter jurisdiction, and it upheld the district court’s refusal to recognize a Sudanese divorce certificate. The citation sanction comes at the end, in the Court’s ruling on Ali’s motion for appellate fees, and it is separated carefully from the frivolousness question.
The Court declined to sanction under N.D.R.App.P. 38 because it concluded the appeal was “not completely frivolous.” It then turned to the brief itself. Osman had fixed two nonexistent citations, but the Court found he “failed to acknowledge numerous other citations wholly unrelated to the propositions for which they were cited.” Relying on the citation and accuracy requirements of N.D.R.App.P. 28 and the general enforcement power in N.D.R.App.P. 13, the Court held “a sanction is appropriate based on the multiple fictitious or nonexistent citation errors in his opening brief” and set it at $1,000.
The opinion text reviewed does not mention artificial intelligence. It cites City of Dickinson v. Helgeson and Stokka v. Stokka as prior awards for fake or nonexistent citations, which places the case in the Court’s recent line of fixed-amount awards for fictitious or nonexistent citations. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that in this line the sanction attaches to the inaccurate citations themselves, whatever their source.
Implications for your firm
Operational steps a firm reading this case may wish to consider documenting. Strategic and rule-application calls belong to your firm's attorneys.
- Review a brief in full after a fabricated citation is flagged. Osman corrected two nonexistent citations but failed to acknowledge numerous other citations wholly unrelated to the propositions for which they were cited, and the Court imposed the sanction based on the multiple fictitious or nonexistent citation errors in his opening brief.
- Consider that a sanction for citation errors can issue even when the appeal is not frivolous. The Court declined Rule 38 sanctions but imposed $1,000 under Rule 13 for the citations.
- Document citation checks against the text of each cited authority. Ali's motion pointed to quotations that could not be found in the authority provided, not only to cases that did not exist.
Sources
Primary sources
- AI attribution: the opinion text (Charlotin copy of the court PDF) does not mention artificial intelligence or any tool; it sanctions fictitious and nonexistent citations as such. Attribution of the brief to AI is a Charlotin tracker inference.
- Source coverage: only part of the court's own PDF was compared on screen (PDF p. 1 caption; opinion p. 2, paras. 4-8; top of p. 3, paras. 9-10; bottom of p. 13 through p. 15, end of para. 39 through para. 43). Opinion p. 1 (paras. 1-4), pp. 3-12 (paras. 10-36), and the top of p. 13 (paras. 37-39) rest on the Charlotin copy, which has the same court formatting, pagination, and page count. A full on-screen pass was attempted on 2026-09-28 but the browser tab kept being backgrounded; ndcourts.gov blocks every non-browser retrieval path.