Dixon v. MultiCare Health System
U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington · W.D. Wash. · Washington bar guidance
Conduct
Pro se plaintiff in an ERISA case cited nonexistent cases and cases that did not support the propositions for which they were offered in opposition to a motion to dismiss.
Consequence
Court declined monetary sanctions but warned that fees may be awarded for future repetition; motion to dismiss denied in part, granted in part with ERISA claims stayed pending arbitration.
Lesson
Pro se litigants can be sanctioned for Rule 11 violations from AI-style citation patterns; courts increasingly issue warnings first with explicit reservation of fees for repeat conduct.
Verified May 10, 2026
- Citation
- Dixon v. MultiCare Health Sys., No. 3:25-cv-05414-BHS (W.D. Wash. Mar. 4, 2026) (Settle, J.)
- Decided
- March 4, 2026
Summary
Pro se plaintiff Dixon filed an ERISA action against MultiCare Health System in W.D. Wash. In briefing on MultiCare's motion to dismiss, Dixon repeatedly cited nonexistent cases and cases that did not support the propositions for which they were offered. MultiCare's motion to dismiss requested sanctions for Dixon's pattern of improper filings, including citing nonexistent or inapplicable case law and misleading the Court, but asked only for an admonishment, not fees. Dixon did not directly respond to the sanctions request.
- AI tool:
- Unspecified generative AI
- Sanction amount:
- None (warning only; the Court reserved monetary sanctions for any future repetition, stating 'If, in the future, Dixon repeats this behavior, monetary sanctions may be awarded')
What sanction did the court impose?
Judge Benjamin H. Settle denied MultiCare's motion to dismiss in part and granted it in part on the merits (ERISA claims survived but were stayed pending arbitration). On the sanctions question, the Court declined to impose monetary sanctions but issued a warning: 'The Court has no formal rule against the use of generative artificial intelligence to write pleadings and briefs. However, parties are bound by Rule 11, which requires parties to certify that their legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law.' The Court found Dixon's 'repeated and presumably intentional failure to verify cited authority supports an award of sanctions' but reserved that remedy: 'If, in the future, Dixon repeats this behavior, monetary sanctions may be awarded.' The Court applied the standard pro se solicitude rule from Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 521 (1972), but noted that pro se status does not immunize from the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Why does Dixon v. MultiCare Health System matter for law firms using AI?
Settle’s W.D. Wash. order joins the growing 2026 corpus of “warning, not sanction” responses to pro se AI citation conduct. The structural elements are consistent across this corpus (Ambrose v. Lee in D. Conn., Thomas v. Del. Tech. in D. Del., CHP 1010 McDowell v. Turpen in Bankr. D. Colo.): the court flags the pattern, declines to impose monetary sanctions on the first occurrence, and reserves the remedy for future filings. The Court’s no-formal-rule statement is doctrinally significant. W.D. Wash. does not have a chambers-wide AI standing order from Settle, and the Court is careful to anchor the warning in Rule 11 generally rather than any AI-specific local rule.
The procedural posture also matters. MultiCare asked for an admonishment, not fees, which gave Settle structural cover to deny the harder remedy without weighing the Rule 11 fee-shifting standard at length. For partners reading the case as defense-side precedent, the takeaway is that asking only for an admonishment can foreclose later fee recovery when the underlying conduct would have supported a monetary sanction. If the goal is fees, the motion should ask for fees.
For the corpus more broadly, the case adds to the pattern of pro se AI conduct being treated as Rule 11 conduct (consistent with the negligence standard in Wharton v. Superintendent Graterford SCI, 95 F.4th 140 (3d Cir. 2024) and the no-attorney-can-claim-ignorance framing in U.S. v. McGee, 2025 WL 2888065 (S.D. Ala. Oct. 10, 2025)). The 2026 calibration is consistent: warnings for first occurrences, fees + bar reports for representation cases like OTG v. Ottogi (D.N.J.) and Med. Buyers Group v. Pence (M.D. Ga.).
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.
- Track Judge Settle's framing as the W.D. Wash. data point for the no-formal-AI-rule-but-Rule-11-still-applies posture; this is the dominant judicial response in 2026 to pro se AI citation patterns where the moving party requested admonishment rather than fees.
- Recognize the procedural shape that produced this outcome: defendant asked the Court for an admonishment rather than fees, which made the warning-only response easier to justify than it would have been after a separate Rule 11 motion with the 21-day safe harbor.
- Document that the Court's predicate finding ('repeated and presumably intentional failure to verify cited authority') is doctrinally sufficient for sanctions; the only reason no money was awarded here is that the moving party did not ask for it. Movants in similar postures who do want fees should make the request explicit.
- Note Settle's chambers pattern: a second AI-citation matter before this judge in 12 months (Merz v. City of Kalama, Feb. 25, 2025 was the first), useful as a chambers-level data point for W.D. Wash. practice.