Borsody v. Frontier Heritage Communities
U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas · D. Kan. · Kansas bar guidance
Conduct
Pro se plaintiff's opposition brief cited a nonexistent case; court inferred generative AI use from the fabricated citation.
Consequence
Complaint dismissed without prejudice on independent exhaustion grounds; written admonition under Rule 11; no monetary sanction.
Lesson
D. Kan. district judges will admonish pro se litigants for AI-fabricated citations even where the case is dismissed on unrelated grounds.
Verified May 14, 2026
- Citation
- Borsody v. Frontier Heritage Cmtys., No. 2:25-cv-02168-JAR-ADM, 2025 WL ____ (D. Kan. Nov. 4, 2025) (Robinson, J.) (Memorandum and Order, ECF No. 39)
- Decided
- November 4, 2025
Summary
Pro se plaintiff Andria Borsody, proceeding in forma pauperis, brought a Title VII / ADA discrimination action against Frontier Heritage Communities alleging discrimination, retaliation, and failure to accommodate. In briefing the court resolved a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss filed by Frontier and Ms. Borsody's cross-motion for entry of default and for sanctions. The court found that plaintiff's response brief contained "a citation to a case that does not exist" and observed that the court was "concerned that she relied on generative artificial intelligence in drafting her response brief." The order does not identify the specific tool used; the inference of AI use was drawn from the existence of a nonexistent case citation alone.
- AI tool:
- Unidentified generative AI (the court inferred AI use from a nonexistent case citation; Ms. Borsody did not identify a specific tool)
What sanction did the court impose?
District Judge Julie A. Robinson granted Frontier's motion to dismiss for failure to administratively exhaust under the substantial-identity test (Plaintiff filed her EEOC charge against "The Michaels Organization," not Frontier; the court found Frontier was not on notice of the charge). The complaint was dismissed in its entirety without prejudice. Plaintiff's motion for default and for sanctions was denied because Frontier's Rule 12(b)(6) motion altered the answer deadline. The court issued a separate "Admonition to Plaintiff" cautioning her against using AI to draft legal documents or cite cases without confirming accuracy and directing her to review Fed. R. Civ. P. 11. No monetary sanction was imposed.
Why does Borsody v. Frontier Heritage Communities matter for law firms using AI?
Borsody v. Frontier Heritage Communities is a District of Kansas pro se admonition order that pairs with Ford v. Sherwin-Williams (D. Kan. Mar. 31, 2026) to establish the district’s first-occurrence pattern for pro se AI-citation conduct. Judge Robinson’s November 4, 2025 order resolves two motions on entirely different grounds, the Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal turns on the Tenth Circuit’s substantial-identity test for EEOC exhaustion, then adds a separate “Admonition to Plaintiff” section directed only at the AI-citation issue.
Two features of the order are doctrinally interesting. First, the admonition section is structurally severable: the court could have dismissed the complaint without addressing the AI question at all, but chose to do so in part because it views the issue as warranting a record entry independent of the merits disposition. Second, the order applies Rule 11 expressly to a pro se litigant (“Plaintiff is further directed to review Fed. R. Civ. P. 11, which applies to both attorneys and unrepresented parties”), reinforcing the Tenth Circuit’s longstanding rule that pro se status does not exempt a litigant from Rule 11’s reasonable-inquiry obligation. The Seventh Circuit’s 2026 Jones v. Kankakee County Sheriff’s Department holding to the same effect now anchors a multi-circuit consensus that pro se filers cannot use their status as an excuse for fabricated citations.
For a Kansas firm representing organizational defendants in EEOC matters, the operational implication is mostly about briefing practice on the merits: Borsody’s substantial-identity analysis remains the controlling framework for naming-defendant exhaustion challenges in the district, and the four-factor test (1) ascertainability, (2) interest similarity, (3) prejudice, (4) representation, lines up the same way it has since Romero v. Union Pacific Railroad. The AI-citation flag is the ancillary teaching point: when an opposing pro se brief contains a fabricated citation, flagging it in reply gives the court an opening to admonish under Rule 11 even when the merits disposition would have ended the case anyway.
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.
- Cite Borsody alongside Ford v. Sherwin-Williams as the D. Kan. pair establishing the district's first-occurrence pro se pattern: written admonition, no monetary sanction, but explicit Rule 11 warning.
- Note that an admonition can issue even when the underlying case is dismissed on entirely unrelated grounds (here, failure to exhaust EEOC charge against the correct defendant); the court can still address AI-citation conduct in the same order.
- For Title VII / ADA defense work, the substantial-identity exhaustion analysis under the Tenth Circuit's four-factor test remains the dispositive issue independent of any AI-citation flag.