Chavez-DeRemer v. NAB, LLC
U.S. District Court, District of Nevada · D. Nev. · Nevada bar guidance
Conduct
Wage-and-hour defendant's stay-pending-appeal brief cited at least one nonexistent case, flagged by the Department of Labor.
Consequence
Stay denied on the merits; AI-citation defect noted as Rule 11 warning; no monetary sanction for the citation issue.
Lesson
Hurried stay-motion briefing with unverified AI citations risks both losing the stay and triggering Rule 11 scrutiny on the same brief.
Verified May 14, 2026
- Citation
- Chavez-DeRemer v. NAB, LLC, No. 2:21-cv-00984 (D. Nev. Aug. 11, 2025) (Dorsey, J.)
- Decided
- August 11, 2025
Summary
Plaintiff Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Secretary of Labor) sued NAB, LLC and individual defendants Asia Trinh and Nicole Brown in the District of Nevada (No. 2:21-cv-00984) on a wage-and-hour matter. Following a monetary judgment of $690,005.78, defendants moved to stay execution pending appeal. In an August 11, 2025 order, U.S. District Judge Jennifer A. Dorsey denied the stay motions and addressed an AI-citation defect in defendant Trinh's brief: at least one nonexistent case was cited, flagged by the Secretary of Labor in a footnote (ECF No. 170 n.1). Defendants also relied on the Nken v. Holder injunction-stay standard, which Dorsey found inapplicable to FRCP 62(b) stays of money judgments. Dorsey's order warns that AI tools "may hallucinate (or make up fake) legal precedent" and emphasizes the Rule 11 certification obligation.
- AI tool:
- Generative AI (court referenced ChatGPT and similar tools as exemplars)
What sanction did the court impose?
Defendants' motions to stay execution of the $690,005.78 monetary judgment denied without supersedeas bond required. AI-citation issue documented as a warning; no monetary sanction imposed for the citation defect itself.
Why does Chavez-DeRemer v. NAB, LLC matter for law firms using AI?
Chavez-DeRemer v. NAB is the August 11, 2025 entry in U.S. District Judge Jennifer A. Dorsey’s two-order AI-citation pattern in D. Nev., paired with the December 15, 2025 Harvey v. Torrent Leasing order. As the earliest D. Nev. AI-citation order in the R&G audit dataset, it is also one of the earliest examples of a federal agency (the Department of Labor) flagging an AI-fabricated citation in opposing-counsel briefing.
The procedural posture is unusual: a wage-and-hour defendant moved to stay execution of a $690,005.78 judgment pending appeal, and the AI-citation defect appeared in the stay motion rather than in the underlying merits briefing. For defense counsel, this is a useful reminder that AI-verification discipline cannot be relaxed for ostensibly procedural motions. Dorsey denied the stay on the merits (Nken v. Holder is the wrong standard for money-judgment stays under FRCP 62(b)), but the AI-citation finding in the same order builds a Rule 11 record that travels with the case.
For firms with wage-and-hour or employment-defense practice in D. Nev., the operational implication is that the verification standard applied at the merits stage extends to post-judgment motion practice, and the Department of Labor in particular is actively spot-checking opposing briefs for AI-fabricated authority.
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.
- Stay-pending-appeal motions are a common venue for hurried briefing; Dorsey's chambers will document AI-citation defects in stay denials as a Rule 11 warning even when the merits outcome is independent.
- When the opposing party (here, the Department of Labor) flags a fake citation in a footnote, the chambers will pick it up; build the verification record on the front end rather than waiting for opposing counsel to find the defect.
- Note that this is the earliest order in the Dorsey chambers pattern (followed by Harvey v. Torrent in December 2025); the chambers has been monitoring AI-citation issues since at least August 2025.