Appeals of Huffman Construction, LLC

What sanction did the court impose?

The Board treated the motion to strike as a motion for sanctions under Fed. R. Civ. P. 11, granted it, and struck Huffman's post-hearing reply brief in its entirety. The Board denied Huffman's motion for leave to file a corrected reply brief. The Board noted it lacks authority to issue monetary sanctions and declined to order self-reporting to disciplinary authorities, limiting itself to striking the brief as the sanction tailored to deter repetition under Rule 11(c).

Why does Appeals of Huffman Construction, LLC matter for law firms using AI?

Huffman is the rare AI-hallucination sanction from an administrative tribunal rather than an Article III court, and the failure mode it documents should worry any managing partner who has rationalized AI use behind a layered review process. Counsel here did everything the standard playbook recommends: he disclosed potential errors, employed two experienced attorneys and a long-tenured paralegal as a verification layer, and acted in admitted good faith. The brief still came back with over 70 percent of its citations inaccurate, including fabricated transcript pages from a hearing those same reviewers had presumably attended. Judge Hamady’s response, that “Rule 11 leaves no room for a pure heart, empty head defense,” and that adding reviewers who failed to catch the errors makes counsel’s position worse rather than better, is the line worth circulating internally to anyone who believes a “second set of eyes” satisfies the verification duty.