McNeal v. Calvin

What sanction did the court impose?

On May 19, 2026, the court found that "the false and mischaracterized citations identified in its March 31st Order violated Rule 11(b)." It found she had "persisted in her misconduct," citing misleading citations in her motion for reconsideration and in her show-cause response itself, which cited Thompson v. RelationServe Media for a proposition the court said it does not support ("Thompson says no such thing"). Noting that her claims had already been dismissed with prejudice and that dismissal alone would "presumably not afford much deterrence," the court imposed filing conditions: every future filing in the matter must attach a sworn declaration that she personally researched every citation to confirm it exists and is accurately characterized, or be "immediately stricken from the record," and defendants are ordered not to respond to her filings unless the court explicitly orders them to. The same order denied her motion for reconsideration and her motion to strike and for recusal, and dismissed the two counterclaimants' counterclaims without prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

Why does McNeal v. Calvin matter for law firms using AI?

The March 31 order framed the citation problem through Rule 11’s text and a line of recent decisions. Quoting Turnage v. Associated Bank, it stated that “[e]very filing in a federal court that contains citations to phony case law amounts to a violation of Rule 11(b)” and that “[t]here is no pro se exception to Rule 11(b).” Its main example was “Weniger v. Dynamic Recovery Solutions, LLC,” cited four times: the Westlaw number belonged to a Western District of Michigan prison medical case, the E.D. Mo. case number to an employment case remanded to state court, and a search by name turned up only unrelated decisions, none of which “remotely support the parenthetical Plaintiff attached to the fake case.” The court ordered McNeal to show cause and signaled the range of available sanctions, citing monetary sanctions, filing restrictions, and dismissal with prejudice imposed elsewhere.

The May 19 order turned on the response. McNeal argued there was no evidence of bad faith and that she relied on legal research platforms including LexisNexis, but, the court wrote, she “fails even to acknowledge, much less address, any one of the problematic citations identified by the Court.” It found a Rule 11(b) violation and then found that she “persisted in her misconduct,” pointing to a citation in the show-cause response itself: Thompson v. RelationServe Media, offered for the idea that “Rule 11 does not punish minor citation errors,” which the court said “says no such thing.” It called that citation “yet another time-wasting head fake, which—having been trained as an attorney and directly admonished by the Court’s March 31st Order—Plaintiff knows full well is unacceptable.”

The remedy was chosen for deterrence in a case already lost on the merits. Because the claims had been dismissed with prejudice, the court reasoned that treating the Rule 11 violations as an alternative ground for dismissal would “presumably not afford much deterrence.” It instead required a sworn citation-verification declaration with every future filing and ordered defendants not to respond to her filings unless the court explicitly ordered them to. In a footnote the court described the aim as ensuring that she bears in mind “that she will be held personally responsible for every characterization of every case therein.”