Khoury et al. v. Intermountain Health Care, Inc.
U.S. District Court, District of Utah · D. Utah · Utah bar guidance
Verified May 14, 2026
- Citation
- Khoury v. Intermountain Health Care, Inc., No. 2:20-cv-00372 (D. Utah Sept. 30, 2025)
- Decided
- September 30, 2025
Summary
Relators' damages expert Thomas J. Dawson III served a May 15, 2025 report in this False Claims Act qui tam action that defense counsel discovered contained fabricated CMS deposition testimony, fake quotations from the Medicare Program Integrity Manual, and inaccurate government publication titles. At his July 21, 2025 deposition, Dawson admitted using generative AI (ChatGPT) to combine three draft reports without verifying the content. Relators withdrew the report and testimony, and on August 7, 2025 the court denied the defendants' Daubert motion as moot. Defendants then moved for sanctions and disqualification of relators' counsel. Before the court ruled on those motions, the United States moved to intervene and dismiss under 31 U.S.C. section 3730(c)(2)(A); on September 30, 2025, the court granted the motion, dismissing the case with prejudice to the relator and without prejudice to the United States.
- AI tool:
- ChatGPT
What sanction did the court impose?
Case dismissed September 30, 2025 with prejudice to the relator (without prejudice to the United States). The pending motions for sanctions and disqualification against relators' counsel were not ruled on; no monetary sanction issued in the dismissal order itself. The expert report was withdrawn before the Daubert motion was decided.
Why does Khoury et al. v. Intermountain Health Care, Inc. matter for law firms using AI?
Khoury is the cleanest available example of AI-induced litigation collapse for managing partners considering expert-witness AI policy. The hallucinations were not in attorney filings but in a paid expert’s damages report, and the contamination was severe enough that relators withdrew their own expert, the government intervened to dismiss a five-year-old qui tam action, and a False Claims Act case ended without merits adjudication. Firms underwriting plaintiff-side contingent matters should treat expert AI usage as a discoverable, case-dispositive risk and confirm verification protocols in expert engagement letters.
Sources
Primary sources
Further reading
- https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/dismissal-of-false-claims-act-lawsuit-9590981/
- https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/avoid-the-false-claims-of-ai-hallucinations-when-litigating-fca-matters
- 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.
- Whether the United States' decision to intervene and dismiss was caused by the AI-hallucination disclosure is editorial inference from timing, not a finding stated in the dismissal order.