Button v. Jimison (Oct. 17, 2025 order)
U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington · W.D. Wash. · Washington bar guidance
Conduct
Pro se plaintiffs cited at least six cases the court could not locate or that did not contain the language attributed to them.
Consequence
Future-filing certification requirement imposed; filings without the per-decision certification will be stricken.
Lesson
Estudillo chambers' standard remedy for fictitious citations is a prospective per-filing certification, not a monetary sanction.
Verified May 7, 2026
- Citation
- Button v. Jimison, No. 3:25-cv-05622-DGE (W.D. Wash. Oct. 17, 2025) (Estudillo, J.)
- Decided
- October 17, 2025
Summary
Pro se plaintiffs Mitchell Taylor Button and Dusty Button sued John Jimison for defamation in a diversity action. After the defendant filed a pro se Answer and the plaintiffs moved to strike, plaintiffs' reply brief and related filings cited multiple cases that Judge David G. Estudillo could not locate or that did not contain the quoted language the plaintiffs attributed to them. The court catalogued specific examples in a footnote: a misquoted Ninth Circuit anti-SLAPP case, a Washington Court of Appeals case the court could not find, a misquoted Tenth Circuit opinion, an S.D. Cal. case the court located but whose cited order the court could not find, and a citation in this district that pointed to an "unassigned case that was administratively terminated after it was opened in error."
- AI tool:
- Generative AI inferred from the citation pattern; specific tool not identified on the record
What sanction did the court impose?
Court granted the motion to strike defendant's Answer and ordered defendant to file an amended Answer within 21 days. Court advised plaintiffs that they "should not rely on artificial intelligence programs to conduct research or draft legal arguments" and required that all future filings include a per-filing certification: "I have reviewed each court decision cited in this filing. I certify that each decision cited is a valid decision and that any language quoted from a decision that is included in this filing is accurate." Filings without the certification will be stricken.
Why does Button v. Jimison (Oct. 17, 2025 order) matter for law firms using AI?
Button v. Jimison is part of a multi-jurisdiction litigation campaign by Mitchell and Dusty Button, who have repeatedly faced AI-citation findings in 2025. The Western District of Washington case before Judge Estudillo is the focal point in this database; parallel orders from Button v. Doherty (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 30, 2025) and Button v. Humphries (C.D. Cal. Sept. 12, 2025) address similar conduct and are referenced in the follow-on January 20, 2026 Button order. By that follow-on date, the Estudillo court catalogued additional fictitious citations even after the per-filing certification was imposed, demonstrating that the prospective certification remedy is not self-enforcing when the underlying conduct is structural.
For firms tracking judicial AI policy, the Oct. 17 order is most useful as a clean articulation of the chambers’ standard remedy. Estudillo did not impose monetary sanctions, did not refer counsel to bar discipline (none was retained as of this order), and did not strike the underlying filings; he imposed a forward-looking attestation requirement and tied any failure to comply to automatic strikeout. The structural insight is that the chambers seems to be developing a graduated response: warning footnote, then certification requirement, then strikeout, then sanctions. Firms can use this graduated structure as a model when drafting their own internal AI escalation policies.
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.
- When facing a self-represented adversary in W.D. Wash. before Judge Estudillo, anticipate that any unlocatable cite in opposing briefs is likely to draw the chambers' standard certification order rather than a pure dismissal.
- The certification language Estudillo uses is reusable: a firm developing internal AI policy can borrow it as a template for what an attorney's per-filing AI-use attestation might look like in a regulated litigation context.
- The Buttons' subsequent filings continued to include fictitious citations after this order; the procedural lesson is that the certification requirement is necessary but not sufficient to deter bad-faith citation practice. Pair it with strict downstream enforcement.