Jane Doe 1 v. Mount Saint Mary High School Corporation of the State of Oklahoma
U.S. District Court, Western District of Oklahoma · W.D. Okla. · Oklahoma bar guidance
Conduct
Plaintiffs' counsel filed a brief with fake and misleading citations, then a motion falsely stating she had personally reviewed the cases and that none were AI-generated.
Consequence
Rule 11 public reprimand, notice to each client, and a self-report to her state bar; no fine, given a discovery fee award and her fine in a companion case.
Lesson
Here the false explanation offered after the citations were caught was itself part of the Rule 11(b) violation, alongside the fake authority.
Verified September 29, 2026
- Citation
- Jane Doe 1 v. Mount Saint Mary High School Corp., No. CIV-22-992-R, Order (W.D. Okla. May 13, 2026), ECF No. 177
- Decided
- May 13, 2026
Summary
In a long-running action brought by pseudonymous plaintiffs against Mount Saint Mary High School and other defendants, plaintiffs' counsel Rachel Bussett signed and filed a response brief opposing two motions to compel. The first version was stricken because it still contained draft comments; the refiled version was untimely. Defendants' replies pointed out that it cited authorities that were "either nonexistent or misleading." Ms. Bussett then filed a motion for leave to file the response out of time and substitute an amended one, which, the court found, "offered an absurd explanation for the inclusion of fake cases" and stated that she "personally reviewed the authorities cited in the brief" and that "the cases cited were real published decisions, not fabricated or AI-generated." The court found those statements false. It noted that the same conduct occurred in another case before it, Crist v. West, where she alerted defense counsel to citation errors but did not notify the court. After a March 31, 2026 show-cause hearing, the court concluded it was "left with the impression that Ms. Bussett is not being completely candid about how the errors occurred," citing her "tech stack" explanation and her description of the cases as not existing "as written."
- AI tool:
- Unnamed AI tools (counsel "acknowledged that she used AI tools without performing the essential step of personally reviewing the cited authority")
- Sanction amount:
- Non-monetary: public reprimand; copy of the order to each client with a filed certification; self-report with a copy of the order to the state bar authority where licensed (no fine, in light of a same-day Rule 37 fee award and the monetary sanction imposed the same day in Crist v. West)
What sanction did the court impose?
The court found that Ms. Bussett's inclusion of fake authority and misleading statements in two briefs violated Rule 11(b)(2) and (b)(3), and that her conduct also implicated the duty of candor in Oklahoma Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3. Treating deterrence as the primary goal and crediting her personal circumstances as a mitigating factor, it ordered that the order stand as a public reprimand; that she give a copy to each of her clients in the case within fourteen days and file a certification of compliance; and that she self-report the incident, with a copy of the order, to the state bar authority where she is licensed within fourteen days. The court said it would otherwise be inclined to impose a monetary sanction, but found one unnecessary because the conduct arose on a discovery motion for which fees were already being awarded and because it had fined her in Crist. A separate same-day order assessed $2,500 to each of two defendants against plaintiffs' counsel under Rule 37(a)(5) for the underlying discovery motions. The court found no Rule 11 sanction warranted against co-counsel Laura Reasons, and directed nothing at later counsel Mbilike Mwafulirwa.
Why does Jane Doe 1 v. Mount Saint Mary High School Corporation of the State of Oklahoma matter for law firms using AI?
The order’s reasoning goes beyond the citations. The court wrote that the profession’s growing reliance on generative AI to prepare briefs is “profoundly troubling” for two reasons: some attorneys file AI drafts without verifying them, and “[w]hen all of those tasks are outsourced to generative AI, something essential is surely lost, even if an attorney makes a cursory check of the case citations on the back end.” It nonetheless accepted, “until instructed otherwise,” the Tenth Circuit’s statement that there is “nothing inherently problematic with the use of GenAI in the practice of law,” and framed the issue, quoting Mattox v. Product Innovations Research, as one of trust.
The finding of a Rule 11 violation rests on two filings: the response brief with fake and misleading authority, and the follow-on motion for leave, whose statements that the cases were real and not AI-generated “proved to be false.” The court also listed reasons it doubted counsel’s candor, including an unexplained gap between the stated mailing date and the arrival of discovery responses, her vacillation at the hearing between calling the cases “clearly wrong” and saying she “did everything correctly,” and her explanation that a “tech stack” error merged parts of two briefs.
The companion entry, Crist v. West, is the other case the order cites, decided six days earlier by the same court against the same attorney with a $250 fine. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that, in this case, the court sanctioned the after-the-fact explanation as well as the original filing, and chose notification-based remedies (clients and the state bar) over a second fine.
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 any statement to the court about how a brief was prepared before filing it. The court found counsel's assertion that the cases were "not fabricated or AI-generated" false and relied on it in finding a Rule 11(b)(2) and (b)(3) violation.
- Document an explanation that holds up under questioning. The court rejected a "tech stack" account as rendered "even less plausible by the fact that the same misconduct occurred in another completely unrelated proceeding pending before the undersigned."
- Review which lawyer on a team prepared a defective filing. Here the court declined to sanction co-counsel because the drafting attorney "prepared the filings at issue."
- Consider how a sanction in one case can shape another. The court cited its fine in Crist v. West as a reason not to add a monetary sanction here.