Green Building Initiative, Inc. v. Green Globe International, Inc.
U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon · D. Or. · Oregon bar guidance
Verified April 24, 2026
- Citation
- Green Building Initiative, Inc. v. Peacock, No. 3:24-cv-298-SI, ECF No. 87 (D. Or. Oct. 27, 2025)
- Decided
- October 27, 2025
Summary
In a motion for interim attorney's fees following a successful anti-SLAPP motion to strike, plaintiff Green Building Initiative cited two cases for the proposition that federal courts applying Oregon's anti-SLAPP statute have consistently allowed interim fee awards. One citation, 'Stell v. Cardenas, No. 3:21-cv-413-HZ, 2022 WL 1696093 (D. Or. May 26, 2022),' was entirely fabricated: the case does not exist, the Westlaw cite leads nowhere, and Case No. 3:21-cv-413 is actually JS Halberstam Irrevocable Grantor Trust v. Davis, presided over by Judge Simon (not Judge Hernandez) and closed by judgment on May 9, 2022. The second citation, 'Page v. Parsons, 249 F. Supp. 3d 998, 1017 (D. Or. 2017),' was a near-miss: a real case named Page v. Parsons exists at 249 Or. App. 445 (2012) (an Oregon Court of Appeals decision), and 249 F. Supp. 3d 998 is actually a death-penalty habeas decision (Deck v. Steele) from the Eastern District of Missouri.
- AI tool:
- Microsoft Copilot
What sanction did the court impose?
On October 27, 2025, Judge Michael H. Simon denied the interim fees motion without prejudice as premature and issued an order to show cause why sanctions should not be imposed under Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b) on both GBI and its counsel for citing hallucinated cases. The court ordered GBI to respond by November 10, 2025, and to propose appropriate sanctions if the court concluded sanctions were warranted. Final sanctions disposition is not contained in this order.
Why does Green Building Initiative, Inc. v. Green Globe International, Inc. matter for law firms using AI?
Green Building Initiative is one of the District of Oregon’s clearest expositions of the Rule 11 framework for AI-hallucinated citations. Judge Simon’s order walks through both a fully fabricated case (Stell v. Cardenas) and a near-miss citation (Page v. Parsons) where the case name is real but the reporter and court are wrong, and emphasizes that under Rule 11(b), citation to a fake opinion does not provide a non-frivolous ground for any legal contention. The opinion also cites the Oregon State Bar’s February 2025 Formal Opinion No. 2025-205 on AI tools as having explicitly warned attorneys of their verification duty under Oregon RPCs 3.3 and 4.1.
Sources
Primary sources
Further reading
- Final disposition of the Rule 11 show-cause order (whether sanctions were imposed, and in what amount) is not contained in the October 27, 2025 order; subsequent docket entries have not been tracked here.
- Whether GBI or its counsel ultimately acknowledged use of a generative AI tool, and which one, is not established in this order; the court only observed that the fake citations bore the 'hallmarks' of generative AI.