Sherwood v. County of Botetourt, Virginia

How did the court address the AI-related conduct?

The court denied the plaintiffs' motion for leave to file a second amended complaint (ECF No. 93). It found that the proposed pleading removed direct references to the nonexistent statute language and cases but "still includes arguments that hinge on the premises of those made-up laws," and held that "[c]ontinuing to use the premises of false law and fake cases is undoubtedly bad faith." With the amended complaint left as the operative pleading, the court granted the defendants' motions to dismiss as to all twenty counts and dismissed the case; Counts I through IV were dismissed under Younger abstention, and Counts V and VI were dismissed with prejudice as to the family members. The withdrawn TRO motion was dismissed and the motions to quash were dismissed as moot. The opinion imposes no sanction and makes no referral; in a footnote it observes that other federal courts have imposed Rule 11 sanctions and other discipline for fictitious citations.

Why does Sherwood v. County of Botetourt, Virginia matter for law firms using AI?

Judge Urbanski’s opinion treats the fabricated authority as part of the merits rather than as a separate sanctions matter. The opening paragraph states that the Sherwoods’ claims “appear to stem from incorrect interpretations of law and include citations to hallucinated law ostensibly obtained from generative AI tools,” and it traced the pleading’s twenty counts to two misunderstandings: the requirements for a misdemeanor warrant under Virginia Code section 19.2-72 (whether a sworn written affidavit is required when the complainant is a police officer) and the effect of a nolo contendere plea in Virginia court. It found four cases cited in the amended complaint that “do not exist,” a quotation attributed to McCary v. Commonwealth that “appears nowhere in that opinion,” and a reporter citation that belongs to a different case, and it said “the frequency of these errors suggests that they are more than a mere scrivener’s error.” On the Anderson citation, it added that it “cannot account for Plaintiff’s counsel’s choice to cite to a non-existent case instead, beyond the use of generative AI.”

The operative consequence came under Rule 15. After the defendants flagged the false citations, plaintiffs sought leave to file a second amended complaint “so that the operative pleading reflects additional clarification and refinement.” The court compared the two pleadings and found that the proposed version dropped the direct references to the nonexistent authority but kept the allegations built on it, such as the claim that the warrants were obtained with “no written probable-cause affidavit.” Applying the Fourth Circuit’s rule that leave may be denied for bad faith, it held that “[c]ontinuing to use the premises of false law and fake cases is undoubtedly bad faith” and denied the motion.

The court also explained why it reached the merits of claims it was dismissing under Younger abstention: “Because Sherwood’s counsel has injected hallucinated law into the record, the court elaborates on the merits of these claims ‘to say what the law is.’” No sanction or referral was ordered. A footnote notes that courts elsewhere have imposed Rule 11 sanctions for fictitious citations and quotes Park v. Kim for the duty to “read, and thereby confirm the existence and validity of, the legal authorities on which they rely.”