Saunders v. Albertsons/Safeway, LLC
U.S. District Court, District of Colorado · D. Colo. · Colorado bar guidance
Verified April 26, 2026
- Citation
- Saunders v. Albertsons/Safeway, LLC, No. 1:24-cv-00814-PAB-SBP, 2026 WL 1040465 (D. Colo. Apr. 16, 2026)
- Decided
- April 16, 2026
Summary
Pro se plaintiff Jamie Lee Saunders submitted a reply brief in support of her motion for expert costs that cited Lampe v. United States, 18 F. App'x 744 (10th Cir. 2001), a fictional AI-generated case. Defendant Safeway flagged the fabricated citation in an embedded motion to strike contained in its surreply, and Saunders acknowledged the error and apologized in a subsequent filing. United States Magistrate Judge Susan Prose declined to strike the underlying motion, finding the two-week filing delay caused no prejudice and accepting Saunders's apology, but warned her that future filings citing hallucinated cases may be stricken without further analysis.
- AI tool:
- Unspecified generative AI
What sanction did the court impose?
No monetary sanction or formal discipline. Judge Prose issued an explicit on-the-record warning that any future filings relying on hallucinated cases "may result in [Saunders's] filings being stricken without further analysis." The court reached the merits of the underlying motion for expert costs and granted it in part.
Why does Saunders v. Albertsons/Safeway, LLC matter for law firms using AI?
Saunders is a reminder that hallucinated-citation incidents are not confined to lawyers: pro se litigants increasingly use generative AI for brief drafting, and opposing counsel is now actively scanning for fabricated authority and raising it in surreplies. For a managing partner, the operational takeaway is that even a one-line warning footnote, with no monetary sanction, creates a published, Westlaw-indexed record tying the litigant’s name to AI hallucination, a reputational outcome the firm’s malpractice carrier will count among its loss-prevention data points.
Sources
Further reading
- CourtListener docket search (aggregator)
- 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.