Evans v. Robertson
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division · E.D. Mich. · Michigan bar guidance
Conduct
Both pro se parties filed briefs with nonexistent cases, case numbers belonging to other cases, a quotation the court could not find in any case, and misattributed quotations.
Consequence
Here the court imposed no sanction but ordered both parties to certify every citation in future filings and warned of more stringent sanctions.
Lesson
Here the court required a citation certification from both sides when it first flagged the factitious citations, before any sanction.
Verified September 29, 2026
- Citation
- Evans v. Robertson, No. 24-cv-13435, Order Directing Alternate Service, Extending the Summons, and Resolving Miscellaneous Motions (E.D. Mich. Sept. 25, 2025) (Stafford, M.J.), ECF No. 74
- Decided
- September 25, 2025
Summary
Plaintiff Sybrena Evans, proceeding pro se, sued a defendant who appears as "Danielle Robertson" (a name the defendant says is not her legal name) for copyright infringement, defamation, fraud, and harassment. In an order resolving a set of motions on service, anonymity, and a protective order, Magistrate Judge Elizabeth A. Stafford added a section on "Factitious Citations," noting that both parties' briefing "contained multiple factitious citations and quotations, presumably a product of using artificial intelligence (AI) software." For Evans, the court identified a nonexistent citation, "Aguirre v. Reese, No. 2:12-cv-01837, 2013 WL 6577085, at *5 (D. Nev. Dec. 13, 2013)," whose case number belongs to a different District of Nevada case; a quotation attributed to Doe v. F.B.I., 218 F.R.D. 256 (D. Colo. 2003), that the court could not find in that case or any other; and misattributed quotations to two other cases. For Robertson, the court found a citation to "Mickens v. 10th Jud. Dist. Ct., 460 F. App'x 728 (9th Cir. 2011)" inaccurate (the two real Mickens decisions are Eleventh Circuit Rooker-Feldman rulings, not cases on dismissing abusive litigation) and a cited "McNair v. Everly" decision nonexistent, its case number belonging to a different E.D. Mich. case. The court said Robertson's filings contained other inaccuracies it would "not belabor."
- AI tool:
- Presumed, tool not identified (the magistrate judge describes the factitious citations as "presumably a product of using artificial intelligence (AI) software")
What did the court warn about?
The court imposed no sanction in this order. It stated that "[t]he parties' pro se status offers no excuse for the factitious citations or quotations, and the Court will not tolerate this practice in future filings from either party." It ordered both Evans and Robertson to include in each future filing "a written representation that [they have] personally checked each legal citation and each citation is accurate and stands for its asserted proposition," and warned that failure to do so "may result in a recommendation to impose more stringent sanctions." The court observed that if an attorney had filed a brief "littered with inaccurate citations," Rule 11 sanctions would have been appropriate. The rest of the order granted Evans's motions to compel disclosure of Robertson's legal name (allowing a registered-agent address), granted Robertson's protective-order motion in part, and extended the time for service by email. The same case produced a November 2025 order revoking both parties' electronic filing privileges and a July 2026 order striking their objections, both of which have their own entries.
Why does Evans v. Robertson matter for law firms using AI?
This order is the first step in the Evans v. Robertson sequence, and the AI discussion is a short section at the end of an order mostly about service and anonymity. Magistrate Judge Stafford traced each defective citation: case numbers that the District of Nevada and the Eastern District of Michigan had assigned to unrelated cases in which no filings were made on the cited dates, a quotation the court did not find in the cited opinion or in any other case, and a citation to “Mickens” that did not match either of the two real Eleventh Circuit decisions by that name, which concern the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. The AI link is framed as a presumption, not a finding.
The court’s response drew on Everett J. Prescott, Inc. v. Beall (D. Me. 2025), quoting it for the points that AI “offers a tempting tool” to pro se litigants and that a pro se litigant “has an obligation to review documents filed with the Court to make certain they are scrupulously accurate.” Rather than sanction either party, the court adopted the remedy it cited from Beall: a written representation in every future filing that each citation was personally checked, is accurate, and stands for its asserted proposition.
The certification became the reference point for what followed. On November 20, 2025, the district judge found that both parties’ factitious citations after this order were “tantamount to bad faith” or wanton and revoked their electronic filing privileges; see Evans v. Robertson (November 2025). In July 2026 the court struck both parties’ objections to a report and recommendation, noting in part that their certifications omitted the “stands for its asserted proposition” language; see Evans v. Robertson (July 2026).
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 a cited docket number and Westlaw number belong to the case named. Here two citations carried case numbers the court traced to unrelated cases.
- Review the exact wording of any court-ordered citation certification; here it required a representation that each citation is accurate and 'stands for its asserted proposition.'
- Consider that a court's certification order can become the baseline for later sanctions; in this case the later orders relied on it.
Sources
Primary sources
- AI attribution: the order says the factitious citations were 'presumably' a product of AI software; it makes no finding that either party used AI, and neither party's account of AI use appears in the order.