Mills v. City of St. Louis
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division · E.D. Mo. · Missouri bar guidance
Conduct
Pro se plaintiff filed briefs with nonexistent cases and fabricated quotations, then filed another false statement post-show-cause.
Consequence
Action dismissed with prejudice as a Rule 11(c) sanction; court rejected non-monetary alternatives given post-notice persistence.
Lesson
Dismissal with prejudice is on the table for pro se Rule 11 violations; persistence after a show cause order escalates the sanction.
Verified May 8, 2026
- Citation
- Mills v. City of St. Louis, No. 4:25-cv-1219-MTS, 2026 WL 251781 (E.D. Mo. Jan. 30, 2026) (Schelp, J.)
- Decided
- January 30, 2026
Summary
Pro se plaintiff Theoda E. Mills, Jr., a doctorate-holder, filed an employment discrimination action against the City of St. Louis, Sylvia Jackson-Bell, and Victoria Anwuri alleging age- and sex-based discrimination and retaliation. From the start of the action, plaintiff's filings contained misquotations and misrepresentations of cited case law. The conduct escalated to citing cases that did not exist and including wholly fabricated quotations from cases that do exist. On December 3, 2025, Judge Matthew T. Schelp issued an order to show cause requiring plaintiff to explain why he should not be sanctioned under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(c)(3) (Mills v. City of St. Louis, 2025 WL 3470293 (E.D. Mo. Dec. 3, 2025)). Plaintiff responded acknowledging he used 'electronic drafting tools that paraphrase legal principles' and 'mistakenly believed' those summaries accurately reflected the holdings of the cited cases. He requested any sanction be 'non-monetary.' Days after the show cause order issued, plaintiff filed yet another paper containing an objectively false representation, claiming multiple times that the court had appointed counsel to the pro se plaintiff in Zekert v. FieldWorks, LLC, 4:20-cv-0471-RWS (E.D. Mo.), which the court had not done.
- AI tool:
- Generative AI (the court found plaintiff's filings 'bear the hallmarks of artificial intelligence hallucinations'; plaintiff acknowledged using 'electronic drafting tools that paraphrase legal principles' but did not identify a specific tool)
What sanction did the court impose?
Judge Schelp granted the unopposed motion to dismiss and, as a separate independent ground, sanctioned plaintiff under Rule 11(c) by dismissing the action with prejudice. The court rejected admonition or educational programs as inadequate given that plaintiff persisted in misrepresentations after being put on notice. The court emphasized 'there is no pro se exception to Rule 11(b)' and that plaintiff's doctorate-level education weighed against any leniency. The order is reported at 2026 WL 251781.
Why does Mills v. City of St. Louis matter for law firms using AI?
Mills is the most consequential AI-related Rule 11 sanction yet issued in the Eighth Circuit. Judge Schelp dismissed the action with prejudice as a Rule 11(c) sanction after plaintiff filed multiple papers containing nonexistent cases and fabricated quotations, then continued the conduct after the court issued a show cause order. The court treated dismissal-as-sanction as the appropriate response under Carman v. Treat, 7 F.3d 1379 (8th Cir. 1993), and rejected lighter alternatives (admonition, reprimand, censure, education programs) because plaintiff had already been on notice and persisted.
The order’s most cited reasoning is that the AI question is collateral to the Rule 11 analysis. Schelp wrote that ‘whether Plaintiff used artificial intelligence is largely beside the point in a determination of whether he violated Rule 11 because the fact remains that he provided the Court with multiple filings that contained fictitious and misleading information.’ The same paragraph cites Mata v. Avianca, 678 F. Supp. 3d 443, 461 (S.D.N.Y. 2023), and Turnage v. Associated Bank, 2025 WL 3052638 (D. Minn. Sept. 12, 2025), aff’d summarily, 25-3092 (8th Cir. Nov. 25, 2025), for the rule that ‘every filing in a federal court that contains citations to phony case law amounts to a violation of Rule 11(b).’
The pro se status of the plaintiff did not soften the analysis. Schelp emphasized that ‘there is no pro se exception to Rule 11(b),’ citing Turnage and Ferguson v. Comm’r of Tax & Fin., 739 F. App’x 19 (2d Cir. 2018), and noted plaintiff’s doctorate-level education weighed against any leniency under the Pruitt v. Mote, 503 F.3d 647 (7th Cir. 2007) (en banc) competence factors. Plaintiff’s request that any sanction be ‘non-monetary’ was honored in form but not substance: dismissal with prejudice is more severe than the monetary sanction plaintiff sought to avoid.
For Missouri firms, Mills sets the federal-court ceiling for AI-related misconduct in pro se litigation: dismissal with prejudice is now visible precedent. The decision also folds in plaintiff’s failure to oppose a Rule 12(b)(6) motion as a redundant decisional ground, citing United States v. Files, 63 F.4th 920, 935 n.4 (10th Cir. 2023) (Newson, J., concurring) on the efficiency of redundant grounds. Defendants opposing pro se filings with hallucinated authority in the Eighth Circuit can now cite Mills as the lead case for the dismissal-with-prejudice posture under Rule 11.
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.
- Document any matter where opposing pro se filings cite suspicious authority; Schelp's reasoning supports moving for Rule 11 sanctions even where plaintiff blames AI tools rather than admitting use.
- The court's three-factor framework (pattern of conduct, persistence after notice, education level) is a useful template for arguing dismissal-as-sanction in subsequent E.D. Mo. matters.
- Note the court's holding that 'whether Plaintiff used artificial intelligence is largely beside the point' for Rule 11 analysis: the violation is the false content, not the tool.
- Train staff to flag the citation patterns Schelp identified, including paraphrased holdings that diverge from the actual decision and claims that a court appointed counsel in cases where the docket shows no such appointment.