Merz v. City of Kalama
U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington · W.D. Wash. · Washington bar guidance
Conduct
Pro se plaintiff cited 'Artificial Intelligence' as the source of advice that he did not need leave to amend under Rule 15.
Consequence
Complaint dismissed without prejudice with leave to amend by date certain. No sanction imposed.
Lesson
AI procedural advice is treated like non-binding clerk's-office talk, not a substitute for the Federal Rules.
Verified May 7, 2026
- Citation
- Merz v. City of Kalama, No. 3:24-cv-05588-BHS (W.D. Wash. Feb. 25, 2025) (Settle, J.)
- Decided
- February 25, 2025
Summary
Pro se plaintiff Matthew Merz filed an emergency motion to amend his civil-rights complaint after the deadlines in the scheduling order had begun to slip. In support, Merz argued he had been told he did not need to seek leave to amend under Rule 15. He attributed two sources for that belief: an asserted communication with the clerk's office (which Judge Benjamin H. Settle noted does not give legal advice) and "Artificial Intelligence," which Merz said had told him he did not need to file a motion to amend because the scheduling order had already set a deadline. The court found it unclear whether Merz was asserting AI advice as an excuse for not complying with Rule 15 or as a contention that Rule 15 itself did not apply.
- AI tool:
- Unspecified generative AI (referenced on the record by the litigant as 'Artificial Intelligence')
What sanction did the court impose?
Court granted defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings and dismissed Merz's claims without prejudice, with leave to amend by March 17, 2025. The court denied as moot Merz's motion for an extension of time and granted his motion for leave to file an amended complaint. No formal sanction was imposed. The opinion is notable for treating AI-sourced procedural advice with the same skepticism the court applied to advice attributed to the clerk's office: neither is a cognizable substitute for compliance with the Federal Rules.
Why does Merz v. City of Kalama matter for law firms using AI?
Merz v. City of Kalama is a useful early data point in the W.D. Wash. AI-litigation cluster because it does not fit the dominant fictitious-citation fact pattern. Matthew Merz did not cite a hallucinated case to the court; he told the court that AI had advised him he did not need to seek leave to amend his complaint at all. Judge Settle treated the AI advice as procedurally irrelevant: it did not change Rule 15’s requirements, and it did not authorize the litigant to skip the leave-of-court step. The court’s response was procedural rather than punitive: it dismissed without prejudice, granted leave to amend, and set a deadline.
For firm purposes, Merz is the case to use when discussing the difference between AI as a research tool (where a fabricated citation is the lawyer’s responsibility under Rule 11) and AI as a procedural advisor (where the lawyer or pro se litigant nonetheless remains bound by the Federal Rules regardless of what the AI suggested). The two failure modes look similar when narrated abstractly but produce different procedural consequences. Settle’s order does not threaten sanctions or impose a certification regime; it simply tells the litigant that the procedural advice he received from a non-lawyer source does not change his obligations. That distinction is worth preserving in any internal AI policy memo.
Implications for your firm
Operational steps a firm reading this case may wish to consider documenting. Strategic and rule-application calls belong to your firm's attorneys.
- The Merz fact pattern is the AI-as-procedural-advice case, not the AI-as-citation-fabrication case; firms can use it to map out which AI use cases courts treat as merely unhelpful versus those that trigger Rule 11 issues.
- When a client mentions consulting AI for procedural questions, document that conversation and the verification step (consulting the relevant rule, the local rules, or chambers practice) before relying on the AI output, the same way a lawyer would document research on any other secondary source.
- Settle's gentle posture (no sanction, leave to amend granted, dismissal without prejudice) is a useful baseline: AI use itself does not warrant a sanction, but it cannot excuse noncompliance with the Federal Rules.