Fletcher v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc.

The timeline

• 2024Robert Fletcher sues Experian and Bridgecrest Credit in the Southern District of Texas, No. 4:24-CV-370. He loses and appeals.
• 2025Heather Hersh, managing attorney of Jaffer & Associates, files the reply brief on appeal.
• 18 Dec 2025The Fifth Circuit issues an order to show cause why counsel should not be sanctioned for quotations, citations and assertions unsupported by the underlying case law.
• 18 Feb 2026The published sanctions opinion issues. $2,500, payable to the court within thirty days.

What the AI did

The court found that Hersh “used artificial generative intelligence to draft a substantial portion, if not all, of her reply brief and failed to check the brief for accuracy.” It also found it “likely that she used artificial generative intelligence in her response to the show-cause order” itself. The defects were quotations that do not appear in the cited sources, and assertions the cited cases do not support.

What the court did, and why

“Had Hersh accepted responsibility and been more forthcoming, it is likely that the court would have imposed lesser sanctions. However, when confronted with a serious ethical misstep, Hersh misled, evaded, and violated her duties as an officer of this court.”

The court rested the penalty on two independent grounds, and was explicit that no new rule was needed for either:

• Rule 46(c)Discipline for “conduct unbecoming a member of the bar,” which the court held is broad enough to include frivolous argument and misrepresenting law, and which may include monetary sanctions.
• Inherent power“Submitting a brief riddled with fabricated quotations and assertions is such an abuse” of the judicial process.
• $2,500“IT IS ORDERED that Heather Hersh shall pay $2,500 in sanctions to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit within 30 days of this order.”

“Modern generative AI may be a new technology, but the same sanctions rules apply, and the rules we have are well equipped to handle these types of cases.”

A footnote records that Hersh had been before a federal court on similar ground already, in Powell v. Nelnet, Inc., where a magistrate judge declined monetary sanctions but warned that repeat conduct “would likely warrant” them. Her firm had filed a sworn declaration in that case affirming it had reinforced compliance measures.

What it changed

This is the decision the Sixth Circuit later cited in United States v. Farris for the proposition that the duty to verify is not new. Its practical contribution is narrower and sharper than the headline number: the sanction was calibrated to the response, not only to the brief. A court asked how the citations were checked, got an answer it judged evasive, and priced that separately.

Sources

• Published opinion, No. 25-20086 (5th Cir. PDF, 18 Feb 2026)
• Reported at 168 F.4th 231, and cited as such by the Sixth Circuit in United States v. Farris

Related

• The full sanctions record
• United States v. Farris, which cites this case
• Whiting v. City of Athens, the other 2026 appellate escalation
• Every verified AI standing order

Checked 5 August 2026 against the court’s own published opinion. Information, not legal advice.