Fuller v. Hyde School
U.S. District Court, District of Maine · D. Me. · Maine bar guidance
Conduct
Plaintiff's counsel filed an opposition, and then an errata, with miscited cases and unlocatable quotations, and disclosed AI use (Claude or ChatGPT) only when ordered to show cause.
Consequence
Non-monetary Rule 11 sanctions: admonition, AI CLE, new firm procedures reported to the court, and notice to the client; the opposition was also struck.
Lesson
Here the court weighed late AI disclosure and an errata repeating the errors against counsel, and her remedial steps once the problem became clear in her favor, in choosing a non-monetary sanction.
Verified September 29, 2026
- Citation
- Fuller v. Hyde School, No. 2:25-cv-00354-SDN, Order Imposing Sanctions (D. Me. May 5, 2026) (Neumann, J.), ECF No. 40
- Decided
- May 5, 2026
Summary
Jessica Fuller sued her former school, the Hyde School, and other institutional defendants. When defendants moved to dismiss, her counsel, Attorney Kelly Guagenty, filed an opposition on November 25, 2025, that defendants said contained inaccurate, misleading, and potentially fabricated sources. A later Notice of Errata, the court found, "introduced additional inaccuracies in the challenged citations." After its own review, Judge Stacey D. Neumann found that several cases were cited for unsupported propositions, some quoted language could not be located in the cited sources, and other quotations had inaccurate pincites. Counsel first explained that the errors were not fabrications but the product of an "admittedly poorly overseen" drafting process involving multiple attorneys and drafts. Only in her April 28, 2026 response to the court's show-cause order did she disclose that she or someone on her team had used AI, either Claude or ChatGPT, and acknowledge that she had not done a line-by-line citation check. She apologized, retained new local counsel and added firm oversight, adopted new AI-use and disclosure policies, and registered for an AI CLE program.
- AI tool:
- Claude or ChatGPT (counsel disclosed, only in her show-cause response, that she or someone on her team used AI, "either Claude or ChatGPT," in drafting)
- Sanction amount:
- Non-monetary: admonition; CLE on generative AI with proof of attendance; firm procedures to prevent recurrence, explained in a certification; copy of the order to the client; certification of compliance within 45 days (the opposition brief was also struck)
What sanction did the court impose?
The court found that counsel's conduct fell short of Rule 11: she relied on generative AI to produce case citations and descriptions without confirming them, did not promptly withdraw or correct the opposition after defendants flagged the errors, repeated some of the problems in the Notice of Errata, had not shown that she reimbursed her client for the faulty filings, and disclosed her AI use only after the show-cause order. It credited her acceptance of responsibility, genuine remorse, lack of prior discipline, and remedial steps, and so imposed "non-monetary sanctions." It issued an admonition to Attorney Guagenty and "a broader admonition to the Bar," and ordered her to attend a CLE course on generative AI and submit proof, create procedures at her firm to prevent recurrence and explain them to the court, give a copy of the order to her client, and certify compliance on the docket within 45 days. The court struck the opposition (ECF No. 25), ordered the plaintiff to file an amended opposition, and dismissed defendants' objection to the Notice of Errata as moot.
Why does Fuller v. Hyde School matter for law firms using AI?
Judge Neumann’s order rests on a list of specific findings on each side. On the debit side, counsel “relied on generative AI to produce case citations and descriptions but did not confirm that those authorities existed or accurately stated the law before filing,” left the defective opposition on the docket after defendants flagged it, and filed an errata that made things worse. The court also faulted the timing of her disclosure: she “did not candidly disclose her use of AI in her initial filings and did so only after the Court issued a show cause order,” which the court said implicated her duty of candor.
On the credit side, the court found she had accepted responsibility and “expressed genuine remorse, rather than attempting to deny the inaccuracies or shift blame to others,” had no disciplinary history, and had already begun remedial steps. The court said nothing in the record suggested the conduct was “willful, repeated, or undertaken for strategic advantage.” Those factors, it said, favored “a sanction focused on education, process improvement, and public admonition, rather than a severe monetary or disciplinary penalty.”
The order also addresses the bar generally. The court wrote that “generative AI is not inherently improper and may, when used responsibly, assist attorneys with drafting and research,” but that the attorney’s “nondelegable duty to exercise independent professional judgment and verify all representations made to the tribunal” remains. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that the relief ordered here included written firm procedures that counsel had to describe to the court in a certification filed on the docket.
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.
- Document which AI tools were used on a filing. The court held it against counsel that she disclosed AI use only after the show-cause order, which "further frustrat[ed] the Court's ability to understand the source of the errors."
- Review any errata or corrective filing as closely as the original. Here the Notice of Errata "repeated and extended some of the same problems instead of fully remedying them."
- Consider client billing for defective filings; the court noted counsel had not shown she reimbursed her client for time spent on them.
- Train attorneys and staff on AI verification before an incident. The court credited CLE enrollment and new firm AI policies as mitigation, but still required both by order.