Smith v. Verra Mobility Corporation

What sanction did the court impose?

On May 1, 2026, the court found "that minimal sanctions are appropriate here." It held that by "negligently failing to verify multiple authorities" Sullivan violated his Rule 11 duty, and that the use of AI "does not alter or minimize his duties to the Court under Rule 11, nor the separate duties owed to his client." Weighing his "immediate and unqualified acceptance of responsibility" and his plan for corrective measures, the court concluded that "the most fitting sanction is requiring Sullivan to inform his client of this occurrence." Sullivan was ordered to give the School Board copies of the show-cause order, his response, and the sanctions order by May 5, 2026 and to notify the court of compliance by May 6, 2026. No monetary sanction and no Florida Bar referral was ordered. The docket lists a compliance notice (ECF No. 52) filed May 5, 2026.

Why does Smith v. Verra Mobility Corporation matter for law firms using AI?

The sanction in Smith v. Verra Mobility is unusual in form: no fine, no referral, but an order that the lawyer hand his own client the record of what went wrong. Judge Mizelle had flagged the School Board’s motion to dismiss in the course of a 41-page merits ruling, noting that the brief “misrepresents multiple cases and hallucinates others,” and set out four problems: a real Eleventh Circuit decision, Pincus, that “does not discuss the doctrine at all”; two decisions cited as S.D. Fla. rulings that “do not appear to exist”; and an E.D.N.Y. decision that “does not exist as cited.” The court cited Local Rule 2.01(e) and Florida Bar Rules 4-1.1, 4-3.3, and 4-8.4 and ordered lead counsel to show cause why it should not refer the matter to the Florida Bar or impose Rule 11 sanctions.

As the May 1 order recounts, counsel did not dispute the errors, acknowledged using AI tools including ChatGPT to research and draft the motion, admitted he did not independently verify each citation, attributed the errors to no one else, and described a plan “to ensure that every cited authority is personally reviewed, accurately described, and independently verified before filing.” After reciting the Eleventh Circuit’s requirement that a court-initiated Rule 11 sanction follow a show-cause order and meet a higher standard (“akin to contempt”), the court found a negligent failure to verify and held that AI use “does not alter or minimize his duties to the Court under Rule 11, nor the separate duties owed to his client.”

That last clause explains the remedy. Crediting counsel’s “immediate and unqualified acceptance of responsibility,” the court chose client notice as “the most fitting sanction,” with notice of compliance to the court. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that here the court treated informing the client as a sanction in its own right, and that the order directed counsel to provide the show-cause order and his own response to the School Board.