Ex parte Lee

What sanction did the court impose?

Trial court's denial of habeas was affirmed for inadequate briefing under Tex. R. App. P. 38.1(i). The Court of Appeals expressly declined to issue a show cause order or report counsel to the State Bar of Texas, citing the absence of information about why the briefing was illogical and the fact that the appellate issue had been addressed. No monetary sanction, no suspension, no disciplinary referral. The opinion reproduced Judge Brantley Starr's AI certification as a model for avoiding the problem.

Why does Ex parte Lee matter for law firms using AI?

Ex parte Lee is one of the earliest published appellate opinions to identify suspected generative AI hallucinations in a brief, issued just weeks after Mata v. Avianca and citing Mata directly. It is notable for what the court did not do: faced with three fabricated published-case citations and a brief that jump-cited into unrelated Missouri opinions, the Tenth Court of Appeals declined to issue a show cause order or refer counsel to the State Bar, choosing instead to affirm on inadequate-briefing grounds and append Judge Brantley Starr’s AI certification as a cautionary appendix. For managing partners, the case marks the pre-sanctions baseline of the AI-hallucination wave: courts in mid-2023 were still treating fabricated citations as a briefing-rules problem rather than a discipline problem, a posture that hardened sharply in the cases that followed.