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Kasten Berry Inc. v. Stewart

U.S. District Court, District of Kansas · D. Kan. · Kansas bar guidance

Court sanction

Verified April 26, 2026

Citation
Kasten Berry Inc. v. Stewart, No. 2:24-cv-02270-JAR-BGS (D. Kan. Nov. 14, 2024) (Robinson, J.)
Decided
November 14, 2024

Summary

Kasten Berry Inc. sued former employee Wallace Stewart for breach of an employment agreement, breach of fiduciary duty, and violation of the faithless servant doctrine. In a November 14, 2024 hearing before District Judge Julie A. Robinson (with Magistrate Judge Brooks G. Severson assigned), the court addressed a filing by counsel that contained citations to authority that could not be located or verified. Counsel acknowledged the citations were the product of generative AI research that had not been independently verified before filing. Rather than impose a fixed monetary sanction in the order itself, the court accepted counsel's pledge at the hearing to reimburse opposing counsel for the time spent chasing down the unverifiable authorities.

AI tool:
Unidentified generative AI tool
Sanction amount:
Counsel agreed to reimburse opposing party's fees; specific dollar amount not fixed in the November 14, 2024 order
This case summary is informational only. Verify the underlying opinion or order against the primary source before relying on it in any filing or client matter.

What sanction did the court impose?

Counsel pledged on the record at the November 14, 2024 hearing to reimburse opposing counsel's fees attributable to the unverified, AI-generated citations. The case proceeded; later sanctions activity in 2025 against the pro se defendant on unrelated discovery grounds resulted in a separate $1,809 fee award (Doc. 97, Aug. 6, 2025, Severson, M.J.).

Why does Kasten Berry Inc. v. Stewart matter for law firms using AI?

Berry v. Stewart sits at the soft end of the AI-sanctions spectrum: instead of a fixed Rule 11 fine, the court accepted on-the-record reimbursement of opposing counsel’s wasted time. For a managing partner, the lesson is not that AI-hallucination filings are cheap. The lesson is that even a “lenient” outcome converts the firm’s AI mistake into a direct, billable obligation to the other side, on top of the reputational hit of having to make the pledge in open court. A documented verification step before any AI-assisted citation reaches a filing is materially cheaper than the cleanup.

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Sanctions cases

From the blog

Sources

Primary sources

Further reading

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.

Unverified claims:
  • The specific generative AI tool used by counsel is not identified in the publicly available materials reviewed; the slot data lists it as "Unidentified" and the cited PDF could not be parsed to confirm a brand name.
  • The exact dollar value of the reimbursement pledged at the November 14, 2024 hearing was not extractable from the linked PDF (binary content did not render to readable text in available fetch tools); confirmation requires direct PACER access to the hearing transcript or minute order.
  • The identities of the specific sanctioned attorney(s) of record at the November 14, 2024 hearing were not confirmed against the order text during this verification pass.