Smith v. Polk County

What did the court warn about?

In the August 7, 2026 memorandum of decision granting summary judgment to the defendants and denying plaintiff's two spoliation-sanctions motions, the court addressed the show-cause order. It found counsel's response "has fallen well short of the Court's expectations": she relied on a LexisNexis program for citation checking rather than verification by an attorney or a paralegal at an attorney's direction, as the Standing Order requires; she had not explained how the fabricated quotations arose beyond accepting responsibility and denying that AI produced them, so their origin "remains a mystery"; and she had not corroborated her claim that her embedded AI program cannot hallucinate or even named it. Nevertheless, "because counsel has accepted responsibility for the errors in the Plaintiff's filings," the court discharged the show-cause order, cautioning counsel "that any similar shortcomings in future filings will result in sanctions." The court dismissed plaintiff's remaining claims with prejudice and directed entry of judgment.

Why does Smith v. Polk County matter for law firms using AI?

Smith is a warning order with specific findings about counsel’s response. The underlying problem was two fabricated quotations and a pattern of missing certifications under the Western District of North Carolina’s Standing Order Regarding the Use of Artificial Intelligence, which the June 3 order treated as requiring an AI-use certification with each of the memoranda at issue. Counsel’s written response denied using AI for research, said her quotations were her own errors, and asserted that the AI program “embedded in her practice” cannot hallucinate.

The court found that the response fell well short of its expectations, for three reasons. Counsel relied on “a LexisNexis program for citation verification rather than having an attorney, or a paralegal working at an attorney’s direction, verify citations as required by the Court’s Standing Order.” She “has not explained the origin of the fabricated quotations other than to accept responsibility for them and assert that they were not produced by an artificial intelligence program,” so “[h]ow such fabricated quotations could have appeared in the Plaintiff’s filings at all therefore remains a mystery.” And she had “provided no corroboration for that assertion, nor has she even provided the name of the artificial intelligence program that she uses.”

The court nonetheless discharged the show-cause order because counsel accepted responsibility, pairing the discharge with a warning that future shortcomings “will result in sanctions.” Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that, here, the court noted that counsel had not named the AI program embedded in her practice, and treated that as a gap in the response.