GS Holistic, LLC v. AAR Management LLC
U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, Galveston Division · S.D. Tex. · Texas bar guidance
Conduct
Defendants' Rule 12(c) motion cited cases with wrong Westlaw identifiers and wrong courts, years, or dates (the court listed five examples).
Consequence
No sanction; the magistrate judge called counsel's actions "troubling" and wrote, "I do not want to confront this issue again."
Lesson
Here the court treated wrong citation data as troubling whether it came from careless work or unchecked AI, and did not decide which.
Verified September 30, 2026
- Citation
- GS Holistic, LLC v. AAR Mgmt. LLC, No. 3:24-cv-00360, Memorandum and Recommendation (S.D. Tex. July 8, 2026) (Edison, M.J.), Dkt. 86, adopted, Dkt. 100 (S.D. Tex. Aug. 27, 2026) (Brown, J.)
- Decided
- July 8, 2026
Summary
GS Holistic, LLC sued 39 individuals and 39 entities connected to retail smoke shops, many operating under the "Bahama Mama" trade name, for trademark counterfeiting and infringement, false designation of origin, and patent infringement. Seventeen individual and eleven entity defendants moved for judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12(c) or, in the alternative, to be dropped as misjoined parties under Rule 21 (Dkt. 56). Before reaching the merits, Magistrate Judge Andrew M. Edison said he needed "to briefly mention one issue that concerns me greatly": the defendants' motion was "replete with citation errors." He gave five examples. For each of Ochoa v. P.A.M. Transport, Royal v. Integreon, Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP v. Louisiana, People's Workshop v. FEMA, and Jimenez v. CitiMortgage, the Westlaw identifier was wrong, and the court or year (or, for Jimenez, the date) was also wrong; for each he supplied the correct citation. The order does not say the cases themselves do not exist or that the propositions were unsupported.
- AI tool:
- Unidentified (the magistrate judge wrote that he "cannot tell whether these errors are the result of shoddy work by Defendants' counsel or the use of artificial intelligence without any effort to check the citations before filing")
- Amount or terms:
- None; the magistrate judge called counsel's actions troubling and wrote, "I do not want to confront this issue again"
What did the court warn about?
In his Memorandum and Recommendation, the magistrate judge wrote: "I cannot tell whether these errors are the result of shoddy work by Defendants' counsel or the use of artificial intelligence without any effort to check the citations before filing. Either way, the actions of Defendants' counsel are troubling. Defendants' counsel should take care to ensure citations offered to the court are accurate. I do not want to confront this issue again." He imposed no sanction. On the merits he recommended granting the motion in part: the seventeen individual defendants and HMF Global LLC should be dismissed for failure to state a claim, while the claims against the other entity defendants should proceed and the Rule 21 request be rejected. On August 27, 2026, after the plaintiff objected, District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown adopted the recommendation in its entirety, dismissed those defendants without prejudice, and gave the plaintiff 14 days to amend.
Why does GS Holistic, LLC v. AAR Management LLC matter for law firms using AI?
The citation discussion in this Memorandum and Recommendation is short, set apart under its own heading, and placed before the merits. Magistrate Judge Edison listed five citations from the defendants’ Rule 12(c) motion and, for each, identified what was wrong: the Westlaw identifier in every case, and also the district and year (Ochoa, Royal), the year (the NAACP case, People’s Workshop), or the opinion date (Jimenez). He then supplied the correct citations. The order does not describe any of the cases as nonexistent or as failing to support the propositions cited.
What the court would not do is guess at the cause. “I cannot tell whether these errors are the result of shoddy work by Defendants’ counsel or the use of artificial intelligence without any effort to check the citations before filing,” the magistrate judge wrote. “Either way, the actions of Defendants’ counsel are troubling.” The admonition that followed was forward-looking: counsel “should take care to ensure citations offered to the court are accurate,” and “I do not want to confront this issue again.” No show-cause order or sanction followed in this document, and the district judge’s adoption order does not address the issue.
The defendants’ motion succeeded as to all the individual defendants, and the recommendation was adopted in full. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that, in this case, the court flagged the citation problems in a motion that was otherwise partly successful, and said the conduct was troubling “[e]ither way,” whether or not AI was involved.
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.
- Verify citation metadata as well as case names. Here every flagged citation named a real case but carried the wrong Westlaw number and the wrong court, year, or date, and the magistrate judge supplied the correct cites himself.
- Review filings for the pattern a court may read as unchecked AI output. The magistrate judge said he could not tell whether the errors came from shoddy work or AI used without any check, and found the conduct troubling either way.
- Document cite-checking on motions filed by the moving party, not only on responses. The errors here were in the defendants' own dispositive motion, and the admonition preceded the merits analysis.
Sources
Primary sources
- AI attribution is a Charlotin tracker inference. The magistrate judge expressly could not tell whether the citation errors came from "shoddy work" or unchecked AI use and made no finding either way.