Flycatcher Corp. Ltd. v. Affable Avenue LLC
U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York · S.D.N.Y. · New York bar guidance
Verified April 26, 2026
- Citation
- Flycatcher Corp. Ltd. v. Affable Avenue LLC, No. 1:24-cv-09429 (KPF) (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 5, 2026) (Opinion and Order, Dkt. 227); earlier OSC at id., Dkt. 169 (S.D.N.Y. July 18, 2025)
- Decided
- February 5, 2026
Summary
Steven A. Feldman, counsel for Defendant Affable Avenue LLC, filed a motion to dismiss containing thirteen citations to nonexistent cases plus eight additional citations with fabricated quotations. After plaintiffs' counsel flagged the errors on June 22, 2025, Feldman did not notify the court, prompting Judge Katherine Polk Failla to issue a Rule 11 Order to Show Cause on June 26, 2025. Feldman's written July 18, 2025 response to the OSC itself contained a quotation purportedly from Mata v. Avianca that the court determined appears nowhere in Mata; the language was instead lifted verbatim from an October 2023 Goldberg Segalla article recapping that case, without attribution. The court denied Feldman's request to file a corrected and amended memorandum and ordered an August 14, 2025 conference. At a subsequent August 2025 evidentiary hearing, Feldman testified under oath that he had drafted research and briefs using vLex (with AI components), Paxton AI as a cite-checker, and Google's NotebookLM, accepting suggested citations without independent verification on Westlaw or Lexis. Feldman later submitted a proposed reply brief introducing yet another erroneous Himmelstein citation. Judge Failla found that Feldman's repeated derelictions, despite multiple warnings, warranted terminal sanctions.
- AI tool:
- NotebookLM, vLex, Paxton AI
What sanction did the court impose?
On February 5, 2026, pursuant to Rule 11 and the court's inherent powers, Judge Failla entered default judgment against Affable Avenue LLC, struck docket entries 153 through 156, and directed entry of judgment for Plaintiffs against Affable. Plaintiffs' counsel was granted leave to file a Rule 11 / 28 U.S.C. section 1927 fee application against Feldman within 30 days. Assessment of damages awaits disposition as to the remaining defendants.
Why does Flycatcher Corp. Ltd. v. Affable Avenue LLC matter for law firms using AI?
Flycatcher is the most severe AI-hallucination outcome in the dataset to date: a federal court entered default judgment against a represented party as a direct sanction for its counsel’s reliance on generative AI. The order also marks the first appearance of Google’s NotebookLM, vLex’s AI features, and Paxton AI in a published sanctions opinion, and it confirms that “affordable” AI-augmented research platforms do not relieve counsel of the duty to confirm every citation against a primary source. The procedural arc also produced a meta-irony worth flagging on its own: when Feldman responded to the original Rule 11 OSC, his response misattributed a quotation to Mata v. Avianca, the canonical AI-hallucination case, with the language traced by the court to a 2023 law-firm news article summarizing Mata. For a managing partner, the case carries two lessons: an attorney’s AI workflow can extinguish a client’s substantive defense with fee-shifting against the lawyer to follow, and the duty to verify does not pause once a sanctions inquiry begins.
Sources
Primary sources
Further reading
- Document mirror (Damien Charlotin hallucination database, Westlaw printout)
- Document mirror (Damien Charlotin hallucination database, Westlaw printout)
Source PDF is a Westlaw printout mirrored from the Damien Charlotin hallucination database. We are working to add the underlying court docket (PACER, CourtListener, or court website) as a second source.