People v. Crabill

The timeline

• Apr 2023A client hires Zachariah C. Crabill to prepare a motion to set aside judgment, a motion type he had never drafted before. He finds case law through ChatGPT and does not read the cases or otherwise verify the citations.
• May 2023Crabill files the motion with the court.
• Before the hearingHe discovers the ChatGPT cases are incorrect or fictitious. He does not alert the court and does not withdraw the motion.
• At the hearingWhen the judge raises concerns about the citations, Crabill falsely attributes the mistakes to a legal intern.
• Six days laterHe files an affidavit explaining that he used ChatGPT to draft the motion.
• 21 Nov 2023Stipulation to discipline signed under C.R.C.P. 242.19.
• 22 Nov 2023The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approves the stipulation; the suspension takes effect.

What the AI did

ChatGPT supplied case citations for the motion. They were “either incorrect or fictitious,” in the stipulation's words. The AI's error was the small part of the case; everything that turned it into a suspension happened afterward, in the courtroom.

What the court did, and why

The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved the parties' stipulation and suspended Crabill for one year and one day, with ninety days to be served and the remainder stayed on successful completion of a two-year probation with conditions. The violations, per the stipulation:

• Colo. RPC 1.1, competence: failing to understand and properly use the tool he relied on.
• Colo. RPC 1.3, diligence.
• Colo. RPC 3.3(a)(1), candor: not alerting the tribunal once he knew the citations were fake.
• Colo. RPC 8.4(c), dishonesty: the intern story.

“The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved the parties’ stipulation to discipline and suspended Zachariah C. Crabill … for one year and one day, with ninety days to be served and the remainder to be stayed upon Crabill’s successful completion of a two-year period of probation, with conditions.”, the opinion, as reprinted for the Colorado RPC Committee (state PDF)

The one-year-and-one-day length matters: suspensions longer than a year require formal reinstatement, not automatic return. The 90 days actually served was the price of the motion; the structure around it was the price of the lie.

What it changed

Crabill moved AI misuse from courtroom sanction to bar discipline, the first entry in this record that cost a lawyer his license, even temporarily. Every later disciplinary case cites the same aggravator: not the fabricated citation, but what the lawyer said when asked about it. Compare Coomer v. Lindell (a second offense drew a second, larger fine) and Couvrette v. Wisnovsky (the errata that still misstated the law).

Sources

• Stipulation to Discipline, No. 23PDJ067 (Colo. O.P.D.J. PDF)
• The opinion text, reprinted in the Colorado RPC Committee's AI materials (coloradojudicial.gov PDF); 2023 WL 8111898

Related

• The full sanctions record
• Mata v. Avianca, five months earlier, the courtroom-sanction version
• Coomer v. Lindell, the same state, the federal version
• Every verified AI standing order

Checked 4 August 2026. Facts rest on the stipulation and the disciplinary opinion linked above. Information, not legal advice.