Matter of Omid Zareh
New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department · N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dep't · New York bar guidance
Verified May 5, 2026
- Citation
- Matter of Zareh, 2026 NY Slip Op 00619, Motion No. 2025-04518, Case No. 2025-05041 (1st Dep't Feb. 10, 2026)
- Decided
- February 10, 2026
Summary
Reciprocal discipline against Omid Zareh, a New York attorney admitted in 1996, predicated on prior sanctions by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. As a reviewing attorney on a brief opposing a motion to dismiss, Zareh submitted a filing containing numerous citation errors and misrepresentations of case law. The District Court found that ChatGPT described at least one cited case in the same erroneous manner as the brief and concluded the brief was AI-generated. Although the District Court accepted that Zareh did not personally use AI or know of its use during drafting, it found that his denial of AI use while admitting he had not reviewed the cited cases constituted bad faith, and that he had failed to adequately supervise the drafting associate. The per curiam panel (Kern, J.P., Kennedy, Rodriguez, Higgitt, and Chan, JJ.) held the conduct violated New York Rules of Professional Conduct 3.1(a), 3.1(b)(1), 5.1(b)(2), and 5.1(d)(2)(ii).
- AI tool:
- ChatGPT
What sanction did the court impose?
Public censure imposed by the Appellate Division, First Department, as reciprocal discipline equivalent to the public reprimand issued by the Northern District of Texas. No monetary sanction or suspension.
Why does Matter of Omid Zareh matter for law firms using AI?
Zareh is notable because the sanctioned attorney never personally used AI and was not shown to have known an associate did. The First Department imposed public censure anyway, treating the failure to review cited cases, combined with continued defense of an unverified brief, as bad faith and a supervision failure under NYRPC 5.1. For managing partners, the takeaway is that a Rule 5.1 supervisory record, not just personal AI use, is sufficient to put a partner’s license at risk when an associate’s AI-generated work product reaches a court unverified.
Sources
Primary sources
Further reading
- Justia (legal aggregator)
- Document mirror (Damien Charlotin hallucination database, Westlaw printout)
Source PDF is a Westlaw printout mirrored from the Damien Charlotin hallucination database. We are working to add the underlying court docket (PACER, CourtListener, or court website) as a second source.