James v. Conley

What is the current procedural posture?

In a report and recommendation, the magistrate judge recommended denying the County's motion because it was never effectively served under Rule 5. The service email bounced from plaintiff's counsel's servers, so the 21-day safe harbor never began, and plaintiff moved to withdraw the keys within 13 days of receiving the filed motion. She declined to consider a 28 U.S.C. section 1927 request raised for the first time in a reply, and recommended denying plaintiff's request for fees because the court "will not reward Plaintiff for the very conduct necessitating the Motion." She found counsel's "use of and repeated reliance on unverified AI-generated research to be irresponsible and in dereliction of counsel's responsibilities as officers of the Court," and sua sponte recommended that the four attorneys who signed the Fifth Amended Complaint (Aaron Michael Cohn, David S. Rudolf, Sonya Pfeiffer and Natlie G. Figgers) be referred to the district's Ad Hoc Committee on Attorney Admissions, Peer Review, and Attorney Grievance. The recommendation awaits review by District Judge K. Michael Moore; objections were due September 10, 2026.

Why does James v. Conley matter for law firms using AI?

James extends the AI-hallucination problem from case citations to factual allegations. The disputed material was a set of pre-1990 International Association of Chiefs of Police training keys that plaintiff’s Fifth Amended Complaint described in detail to support a failure-to-train theory. Plaintiff’s counsel later conceded the keys came from “AI-augmented” research they could not verify, and the magistrate judge concluded that “although Plaintiff does not state so explicitly, the Keys were AI hallucinations.” She wrote that “[t]his kind of careless behavior is no different than including AI-hallucinated case law in court submissions.”

The magistrate judge recommended denying the County’s motion on Rule 11’s safe-harbor requirement. Its service email never reached plaintiff’s counsel because the email’s size exceeded their firms’ email server limits, and the bounce-back notices went to a junk folder. Service is “not effective if the filer or sender learns that it did not reach the person to be served,” so the 21-day period never started. Plaintiff moved to amend to withdraw the keys within 13 days of being served with the filed motion. The recommendation also declines a section 1927 argument raised only in reply.

The magistrate judge nonetheless recommended referring the four signing attorneys, noting that “while attorneys may use AI responsibly and competently, it is critical that they engage in careful supervision, fact-checking, and citation-checking,” and citing Florida Rule 4-1.1’s comment on understanding the “benefits and risks associated with the use of technology, including generative artificial intelligence.” Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that this recommendation is not yet a ruling: the district judge had not acted on it as of the last docket check.