Hollinger v. Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States

What sanction did the court impose?

EANGUS moved for sanctions on January 6, 2026, and the court ruled the next day (ECF No. 112), granting the motion in part. "Given that Hollinger was clearly placed on notice that he must file accurate authorities, his continued misrepresentation of case law requires severe sanctions," the court wrote, adding that his inadequate discovery responses (in a suit seeking $5 million in compensatory damages) "further support the conclusion that Hollinger is abusing the judicial process and has filed this lawsuit in bad faith." "Because of his continued misrepresentation of legal authorities and failure to respond to his discovery obligations," it dismissed the action with prejudice and directed entry of judgment for EANGUS. It declined the requested fees and costs "because a proper itemized fee application was not submitted with the Motion." The order names no rule or authority for the sanction and makes no bar referral.

Why does Hollinger v. Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States matter for law firms using AI?

Hollinger is a pro se case in which citation problems continued after the court put the plaintiff on notice. The court’s December 5, 2025 order required him to produce the challenged authorities or explain in a sworn declaration how they were generated. His December 29 declaration admitted he had used AI to generate legal authority that does not exist and promised to use only verifiable citations. On the same day he filed briefs quoting language that does not appear in the real cases cited, and EANGUS showed that he continued to cite hallucinated cases in a companion case after the December 5 order.

Judge Brinkema tied the severity of the sanction to notice: “Given that Hollinger was clearly placed on notice that he must file accurate authorities, his continued misrepresentation of case law requires severe sanctions.” The dismissal rests on that misrepresentation and on his failure to meet discovery obligations, which the court said supported the conclusion that he was “abusing the judicial process” and had filed the suit in bad faith. The order names no rule or authority for the sanction, and it declined EANGUS’s request for fees and costs for lack of an itemized fee application. On the plaintiff’s law degree, the court wrote: “As a person with a law degree, he should have checked that the legal authorities he cited in his filings were valid, and should have known how to check the validity of such authorities in legal databases.”

Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that here the court’s reasoning turned on what happened after its December 5 order, and that a sanctions motion seeking fees was granted only in part for want of itemization.