Cole v. Lee
Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Fourth Division · Ill. App. Ct. (1st Dist.) · Illinois bar guidance
Conduct
Pro se tenant's appellate brief gave wrong reporter citations for real cases and cited others for propositions they do not support.
Consequence
Brief stricken and appeal dismissed under Rule 341 in the court's discretion (not described as a sanction), citing eight prior Rule 341 violations.
Lesson
A citation to a real case at the wrong volume and page is treated as a defective citation, and repeat violations raise the stakes.
Verified September 28, 2026
- Citation
- Cole v. Lee, 2026 IL App (1st) 252223-U, No. 1-25-2223 (Ill. App. Ct. July 30, 2026) (Rule 23 order)
- Decided
- July 30, 2026
Summary
Tony Cole, a former tenant of a mixed-use property, sued his landlord Jin Lee pro se in Cook County after two unsuccessful eviction attempts, pleading wrongful eviction, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, breach of the implied covenant of quiet enjoyment, and a Consumer Fraud Act claim. After a simultaneous bench and jury trial produced judgment for Lee on all five counts, Cole appealed pro se. Lee filed no appellee's brief. The First District found that "several of his citations to authorities are incorrect, including attributing propositions to authorities that those authorities simply do not support." Avery v. State Farm and People ex rel. Daley v. Datacom Systems were cited for jury-trial propositions they do not contain. Other citations did not match the cases named: "Stephens v. Kasten, 334 Ill. App. 3d 1004" and "In re Estate of Mulvaney, 288 Ill. App. 3d 464" pointed to pages of unrelated criminal decisions, and the court found similar problems with citations to Kaiser v. MEPC American Properties and Harris Trust & Savings Bank v. Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine. The court noted these examples came only from the first of three argument subsections of the brief.
- AI tool:
- Unidentified (the order flags miscited authorities and authorities cited for propositions they do not support, but does not attribute them to AI)
- Sanction amount:
- Non-monetary: appellant's brief stricken and appeal dismissed in the court's discretion under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 341 (the order does not describe this as a sanction)
What sanction did the court impose?
In a Rule 23 order, the court struck Cole's brief and dismissed the appeal for violating Illinois Supreme Court Rule 341, without reaching the merits of his three contentions. The order does not describe the strike and dismissal as a sanction; the court acted under Rule 341 in its discretion. It held that Rule 341(h)(7)'s requirement of argument "with citation of the authorities" implicitly requires that "citations to authority be accurate," and that Cole's "repeated inaccuracies in this case have prevented meaningful review of his contentions of error and improperly shifted the burden of legal research onto this court." The court tied the severity of the remedy to Cole's history, listing eight earlier appellate decisions in which he had violated Rule 341 and noting that in two of them the court had already struck his opening brief and dismissed the appeal. It acknowledged that striking a brief and dismissing an appeal are "drastic consequences," but concluded that Cole's violations, "particularly when considered alongside his prior Rule 341 violations, warrant the striking of his brief and dismissal of his appeal." The order imposes no fine or fee award and does not mention artificial intelligence.
Why does Cole v. Lee matter for law firms using AI?
Cole v. Lee is a useful marker for what an Illinois appellate court treats as a citation failure. The order does not describe any authority as fabricated or nonexistent, and it does not mention artificial intelligence. Instead it identifies two kinds of defect: real supreme court decisions cited for propositions they “simply do not support,” and case names paired with volume and page numbers that belong to other, unrelated cases. The court held that both violate Rule 341(h)(7), because “[i]mplicit in this requirement is that citations to authority be accurate.”
The remedy was driven in part by history. The court listed eight earlier decisions in which Cole had violated Rule 341, and noted that it had already struck his opening briefs and dismissed his appeals in two of them. It also restated the settled Illinois rule that pro se status does not excuse compliance with the supreme court rules or “entitle him to more leniency.”
The appeal was decided on Cole’s brief and the record alone, because Lee filed no appellee’s brief. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that the defects were found by the court on its own review, without an opponent flagging them, and that checking whether a citation resolves to the named case is a separate step from checking whether the case exists.
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.
- Verify that each reporter citation leads to the case named. Two of the citations here pointed to pages of unrelated criminal decisions.
- Review whether each cited case supports the stated proposition, not only whether it exists. The court treated unsupported propositions as a Rule 341 violation.
- Document citation checks on a brief even where the other side files nothing. The appellee filed no brief, and the court raised the citation problems on its own review.
Sources
Primary sources
Further reading
- AI attribution is a Charlotin tracker inference (the tracker lists the AI tool as 'Implied'). The order never mentions artificial intelligence, generative AI, or hallucination; it describes the defects only as incorrect citations and authorities cited for propositions they do not support.