In re Lisa Cato

What did the court warn about?

The court denied Miller's sanctions motion. It held that Miller did not comply with the 21-day safe-harbor requirement of Bankruptcy Rule 9011(c), a mandatory prerequisite to any award of sanctions, and that his arguments failed on the merits in any event: nothing in Civil Rule 5 requires an attorney to sign a certificate of service, a missing or defective certificate would not void the underlying motion or order, and allegations in a pleading are not evidence to which the Rules of Evidence apply. The cases Miller cited for the certificate-of-service point were, the court found, real but distinguishable. Arguments in the motion that Miller did not pursue at the hearing were deemed abandoned, and arguments going to the merits of the disgorgement order were outside the court's jurisdiction while his appeal is pending. This order imposes no sanction on Miller for the fabricated citations; it notes that their continued use "may violate" Rule 9011(b).

Why does In re Lisa Cato matter for law firms using AI?

This order is a denial of a sanctions motion, and the AI material sits in its first footnote. The court describes the motion that Robert Miller, the debtor’s bankruptcy petition preparer, filed against the U.S. Trustee as containing fabricated legal citations, and it records that the court had, in an order entered after the motion was filed, required Miller to attach to every future filing a certification stating whether generative AI was used and confirming his own independent review of every citation. The footnote then observes that “[t]he continued use of hallucinated caselaw” undermines his arguments “and may violate Bankruptcy Rule 9011(b).”

The disposition rests on ordinary grounds. Miller did not serve the motion 21 days before filing it, as Bankruptcy Rule 9011(c) requires, and the court treated that failure as dispositive. It went on to reject his two remaining arguments on the merits: a paralegal may sign a certificate of service, and a statement in a pleading is not evidence. The court noted that the cases Miller cited on the certificate point were accurate statements of the law that simply did not address the question.

The matter illustrates a court responding to citation problems by a nonlawyer filer with a per-filer AI certification directive and a footnote admonition about potential Rule 9011(b) exposure. This order does not itself impose a sanction for the citations. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider how certification directives of this kind apply to nonlawyer preparers whose filings they review.