Scott v. Illinois Human Rights Commission

The record

• CourtAppellate Court of Illinois, First District, Second Division
• PanelPresiding Justice Van Tine, for the court; Justices Ellis and D.B. Walker concurring
• Case2026 IL App (1st) 251462, No. 1-25-1462, a published opinion
• OpinionFiled 28 July 2026
• SanctionedPetitioner’s counsel, Mason Cole
• Tool“A premier corporate subscription of ChatGPT”, in counsel’s own response (¶ 37)
• False citationsTen: four false statutory quotations, one nonexistent case, and five real cases that do not contain the cited principle or quoted language (¶ 56)
• Rate$1,500 for each false citation and quotation, one rate for every kind (¶¶ 56, 57)
• Total$15,000, to the clerk of the Appellate Court, First District, within 30 days (¶¶ 56, 82)
• AuthorityIllinois Supreme Court Rule 375(a) and 375(b)
• ReferralThe clerk to send the opinion to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (¶¶ 59, 82)
• Considered, declinedService of the opinion on every judge in every pending matter, and continuing legal education on AI use and citation. Declined because the court could not settle whether Rule 375’s list of sanctions is exhaustive (¶¶ 60 to 62). Both “strongly encourage[d]” (¶ 63)
• MeritsCommission decision affirmed (¶ 83)

What the court found

Counsel’s response conceded that every quotation and citation the court had identified was false. It said he had “cross-referenced” every citation “with Lexis-Nexis to avoid hallucinations”, attributed the failure to “inexperience in appellate court”, and proposed his own tariff: $1,000 for the nonexistent case and $500 for each misstatement (¶ 37).

The court found that the response “itself contains misstatements of law”. In one footnote it cited a statutory subsection the legislature removed in 2008, attributed a quotation to the wrong subsection, and then misquoted it (¶ 38). The order had required a pin cite for any citation counsel maintained was accurate. None was supplied (¶ 40).

On the standard, the court adopted the California Court of Appeal’s line that no filing should contain any citation the responsible attorney “has not personally read and verified”, and added its own:

“The only acceptable standard is zero false citations.” (¶ 48)

On the rate, the court declined to price the failures differently. “A fabricated quote, a nonexistent case, and a case that does not say what counsel claims it says are all misstatements of law.” The sanctions rate should be the same for all of them, “as the attorney, not AI, retains ultimate responsibility for what he or she submits to the court”. And on the subscription: “no matter how much one pays for ‘premier’ or ‘corporate’ versions of AI products, it does not negate an attorney’s obligation to verify all citations of authority” (¶ 57).

On deterrence, the court looked at the cases it had surveyed and concluded that the fines being imposed “are not enough to deter improper AI use among attorneys”. The prospect of sanctions in this very case had not stopped counsel from citing outdated statutes and disobeying the order to include pin cites.

“Courts have no choice but to increase fines for AI-hallucinated citations until those fines have a significant deterrent effect.” (¶ 58)

On the referral, the court reasoned that attorneys “verify citations the same way in every court”, so the claim of appellate inexperience “raises questions about attorney Cole’s fitness to practice law generally” (¶ 59).

Why it matters

Most entries on this record report a figure. This one reports the reasoning behind the figure, and the reasoning is that the going rate had stopped working.

Three points travel beyond Illinois. The price is the same whatever form the falsehood takes, because the responsibility sits with the person who signed, not the tool that drafted. The tool’s tier is irrelevant: a paid, corporate subscription is still an unverified draft until a person verifies it. And the court wanted more than money. The opinion surveys what other courts have done, service of the sanctions order on every judge in every pending case, court-ordered continuing education on AI, and a two-year bar from practising before the court, and held back from the first two here only because Rule 375 may not allow them.

The detail that should hold a practitioner’s attention is the response. The document written to explain the false citations contained new ones. An account of one’s own verification, produced after the fact and under pressure, was itself unverified.

Sources

• Scott v. Illinois Human Rights Commission, 2026 IL App (1st) 251462, opinion filed 28 July 2026. Read in full, 31 pages, at the Illinois courts’ own opinion host.
• Illinois Courts, where the opinion and Illinois Supreme Court Rule 375 are published

Related

• The full sanctions record
• Booker v. The Kroger Co., where the denial cost more than the citations
• State of Hawaiʻi v. Presti, where a published court held each nonexistent citation sanctionable
• The judges’ AI orders, one page each

Verified 7 September 2026 against the court’s published opinion, read in full. Information, not legal advice.