Volker v. Nygaard
North Dakota District Court, East Central Judicial District (Cass County) · N.D. Dist. Ct. · North Dakota bar guidance
Conduct
Self-represented plaintiff kept filing briefs with fictitious citations after the court warned him about them; the Supreme Court describes them as AI-generated.
Consequence
Claims dismissed with prejudice as a Rule 11 sanction after a show-cause hearing; appeal dismissed as untimely.
Lesson
A North Dakota trial court used a terminating sanction where a litigant kept filing fictitious citations after an on-the-record warning.
Verified October 1, 2026
- Citation
- Volker v. Nygaard, 2026 ND 56, ¶¶ 1-3 (N.D. Feb. 26, 2026) (Tufte, J.) (describing the May 20, 2025 judgment of the Cass County District Court, Judge Cherie L. Clark)
- Decided
- May 20, 2025
Summary
Self-represented plaintiff Scott Volker sued Danielle Nygaard (now Hough) and Ahlaina Mohler in Cass County District Court. As the North Dakota Supreme Court later recounted, the district court warned Volker at the hearing on the defendants' motion to dismiss that his filings contained fictitious legal citations. Volker then filed additional briefs containing fictitious citations, and the court issued an order to show cause.
- AI tool:
- Unidentified (the North Dakota Supreme Court describes the citations as AI-generated but names no tool)
What sanction did the court impose?
At the show-cause hearing, the district court found that Volker "had willfully defied the court" and dismissed the action with prejudice as a Rule 11, N.D.R.Civ.P., sanction, entering an order for judgment and judgment on May 20, 2025. The North Dakota Supreme Court dismissed Volker's appeal as untimely, without reaching the sanction (Volker v. Nygaard, 2026 ND 56). The opinion describes no monetary sanction.
Why does Volker v. Nygaard matter for law firms using AI?
Volker is the North Dakota trial-court counterpart to the Supreme Court’s own AI-citation sanctions. The record comes to the tracker through the Supreme Court’s opinion dismissing the appeal: the Cass County District Court warned the self-represented plaintiff on the record that his filings contained fictitious citations, he filed more briefs containing them, and after a show-cause hearing the court found willful defiance and dismissed his claims with prejudice under Rule 11, N.D.R.Civ.P. The Supreme Court did not review the sanction because the notice of appeal came more than 90 days after service of notice of entry of the May 20, 2025 judgment, and the clerk’s later insertion of $55 in statutory costs did not restart the appeal period.
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.
- North Dakota trial courts have dismissed claims with prejudice as a Rule 11 sanction for fictitious citations repeated after a warning. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider treating any judicial warning about a citation as a trigger to re-verify every authority in later filings.
Sources
Primary sources
- The district court's show-cause order, the hearing record and the May 20, 2025 order for judgment were not reviewed; this account comes from the North Dakota Supreme Court's opinion. The Supreme Court describes the citations as AI-generated; whether the district court made that finding in those words is not verified.