Gittemeier v. Liberty Mutual Personal Insurance Company
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri · E.D. Mo. · Missouri bar guidance
Verified April 26, 2026
- Citation
- Gittemeier v. Liberty Mut. Pers. Ins. Co., No. 4:24-cv-01236-JAR (E.D. Mo. Nov. 17, 2025) (Memorandum and Order on Sanctions)
- Decided
- November 17, 2025
Summary
Defense counsel Ellen Brooke of Rynearson, Suess, Schnurbusch & Champion submitted two summary judgment briefs containing fabricated case citations, including a wholly fictitious "Chaudhri v. State Auto Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., 2022 WL 4596697 (E.D. Mo. Sept. 30, 2022)." After the Court warned counsel in June 2025 to verify her sources, the firm's second motion repeated the pattern, miscited additional cases, and misquoted the Missouri Practice Series. Judge John A. Ross found the errors were the result of egregious human error rather than AI, but held the carelessness was unacceptable and indistinguishable in effect from AI hallucinations.
- AI tool:
- Unspecified generative AI
- Sanction amount:
- $1,000
What sanction did the court impose?
Judge Ross granted Plaintiff's sanctions motion in part: ordered Brooke to pay a $1,000 penalty to the Clerk of Court, awarded Plaintiff's attorney fees and costs attributable to the citation errors, and directed co-counsel Katherine Smith to file a motion to withdraw. Brooke had already withdrawn from the case before the order issued.
Why does Gittemeier v. Liberty Mutual Personal Insurance Company matter for law firms using AI?
Gittemeier is the case the firm-level governance conversation has been waiting for. Rynearson, Suess, Schnurbusch & Champion is a roughly 20-attorney St. Louis insurance defense firm staffed with experienced partners, and the relationship partner told the Court that two internal technical audits confirmed no AI was used. The Court accepted that finding, then sanctioned counsel anyway because the absence of “internal guardrails” produced filings indistinguishable from AI-hallucinated ones: fabricated reporter cites, miscited Westlaw numbers, and a paraphrase formatted as a direct quote from the Missouri Practice Series. For a managing partner, the lesson is not about AI policy in isolation. It is that the verification workflow a firm builds for AI-generated text, second-set-of-eyes cite checking, signature-block accountability, and a final pre-filing review, is the same workflow that catches the human errors that template reuse and deadline pressure already produce. A firm without that workflow is one autoimmune flare or one missed final-check away from a Rule 11 order with a partner’s name on it.