Robert Ambrogi Blog
In what may be one of the most significant appellate sanctions rulings yet involving fabricated case citations, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has imposed substantial penalties on two Tennessee attorneys for filing briefs containing more than two dozen fake or misrepresented citations.
The court sanctioned attorneys Van R. Irion and Russ Egli, ordering each to pay $15,000 in punitive fines to the court registry, plus joint responsibility for the appellees’ full attorney fees on appeal and double costs.
The sanctions stem from consolidated appeals in Whiting v. City of Athens, Tennessee, arising from litigation over a 2022 fireworks show and its aftermath.
Worth noting, however, is that the court did not expressly find that the fabricated citations were the result of using generative AI. Rather, the court emphasized that no filing should contain citations, however generated, that a lawyer has not personallly read and verified.
Extensive Misconduct
In its March 13 opinion, the three-judge panel — consisting of Judges Jane B. Stranch, John K. Bush and Eric E. Murphy — catalogued extensive problems with the briefs submitted by Irion and Egli on behalf of their client Glenn Whiting.
“All told, we found over two dozen fake citations and misrepresentations of fact in Whiting’s briefs,” wrote Judge Bush for the court, noting that this was “a conservative estimate” that excluded typos or sloppy citations that could be attributed to drafting errors rather than professional misconduct.
The court attached a detailed appendix documenting specific instances of fabricated or misrepresented authority across multiple briefs filed in the three consolidated appeals. The problems fell into several categories:
Non-existent cases: Several citations pointed to cases that do not exist. For example, one brief cited “Berg v. Knox Cnty., TN, 2024 WL 2012345, at *4 (6th Cir. Mar. 12, 2024)” for a proposition about judicial recusal. The court found no such case exists — the Westlaw citation generates no results, and the only source on Westlaw citing to a Sixth Circuit decision called “Berg v. Knox Cnty.” is Whiting’s own briefing.
Incorrect case citations: Other citations pointed to real cases but with wrong reporters or page numbers. One brief cited “Jones v. Hamilton Cnty., 29 F.4th 647, 655 (6th Cir. 2022)” for a proposition about Section 1927 sanctions. The Federal Reporter citations actually correspond to two unrelated Tenth Circuit cases, one involving unfair competition and another involving a guilty plea, neither of which discusses attorneys’ fees or sanctions.
Fabricated quotations: Multiple briefs contained quoted language that does not appear in the cited sources. For instance, the briefs repeatedly quoted the Sixth Circuit as stating “[t]he mere fact that a plaintiff did not prevail does not mean that the claim was frivolous” in Adcock-Ladd v. Secretary of the Treasury, 227 F.3d 343, 350 (6th Cir. 2000). The court found that Adcock-Ladd does not contain this quoted language and is not about frivolous cases at all — it addresses whether attorneys’ fees should be based on the plaintiff’s or defendant’s home market.
Cases cited for unsupported propositions: Some real cases were cited for legal propositions they do not address. One brief cited United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012) for the proposition that “the First Amendment does not protect speech that knowingly asserts false statements of fact.” The court noted that Alvarez actually states the opposite, with the plurality opinion “reject[ing] the notion that false speech should be in a general category that is presumptively unprotected.”
Record misrepresentations: The briefs also misrepresented the factual record. In one appeal, Whiting argued that the district court imposed sanctions sua sponte without proper notice. But the court found that sanctions were actually issued on the city’s motion, which expressly requested sanctions under 28 U.S.C. § 1927 — a critical factual error that undermined Whiting’s entire due process argument.
Show Cause Order
After discovering the citation problems, the Sixth Circuit issued an order requiring Irion and Egli to explain why they should not be sanctioned. The order directed them to provide copies of all cited cases from Westlaw or LexisNexis, highlight quoted material, explain who wrote the briefs, disclose whether the briefs were ghostwritten, state whether they used gen AI, and explain their cite-checking procedures.
Rather than respond substantively to these directives, Irion and Egli argued that the show cause order was “void on its face for failing to include a signature of an Article III judge,” was “motivated by harassment of the Respondent attorneys,” and “reflect[ed] illegal ex-parte communications within this Court.”
The court rejected these arguments. It noted that Irion and Egli had already been told that orders signed by the clerk are valid, and that the Supreme Court had twice denied mandamus petitions from the attorneys challenging this practice. The court also dismissed privilege objections, noting that questions about cite-checking procedures do not implicate attorney-client privilege or work product.
Legal Basis for Sanctions
The court grounded its sanctions in two sources of authority: Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38, which permits awards of costs and attorney fees when an appeal is frivolous, and the court’s inherent authority to sanction bad-faith conduct.
Under Rule 38, the court distinguished between appeals that are “frivolous as filed,” where no arguments could support reversal, and “frivolous as argued,” where the arguments made are themselves frivolous, even if better arguments might exist. The court found Whiting’s appeal frivolous as argued because inventing case law constitutes a misrepresentation of law.
“A fake opinion is not existing law, and citation to a fake opinion does not provide a non-frivolous ground for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law, or for establishing new law,” the court wrote, quoting the Southern District of New York’s decision in Mata v. Avianca, Inc., the 2023 case that first drew widespread attention to AI-generated hallucinated citations.
For its inherent authority sanctions, the court applied a three-part bad faith test requiring: (1) a meritless lawsuit or argument, (2) knowledge or reason to know the case was meritless, and (3) improper motive. The court found all three elements satisfied, noting that “any reasonable attorney should know that a case is meritless if the only authority on which he can rely is a figment of imagination.”
The Penalty
The sanctions order includes multiple components. Irion and Egli must jointly reimburse the appellees for their full reasonable attorney fees on appeal across all three consolidated appeals. They must also pay double costs under 28 U.S.C. § 1920.
Most notably, each attorney must individually pay $15,000 to the court registry as punitive sanctions. The court chose this amount because the misconduct spanned three cases and because “smaller fines have plainly been inadequate — as is evidenced by the continuous stream of cases raising the same problems.”
The court also directed the clerk to forward a copy of the opinion to the chief judge to consider disciplinary proceedings under Sixth Circuit Local Rule 46.
Aggravating Factors
In its opinion, the court identified four aggravating factors warranting particularly harsh sanctions.
First, both attorneys were appealing sanctions orders from the district court. “We find it deeply concerning that a lawyer would engage in further misconduct on appeal from a finding that they engaged in misconduct,” the court observed.
Second, both attorneys have prior discipline for lack of candor to the tribunal. Egli was publicly censured by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 2017 for lack of candor. And in August 2025, while briefing these appeals, Irion was suspended from the Eastern District of Tennessee for five years because he lied to the district court in the underlying case.
Third, the attorneys defied the court’s show cause order and refused to provide the requested information, which the court characterized as compounding their violations.
Fourth, the responses they did file “show a stunning lack of respect for this court, the members of the panel and their staffs, and the rule of law.” The court contrasted their approach with other attorneys who, when caught submitting fake cases, “have apologized and sought forgiveness, rightly recognizing the seriousness of their misconduct.”
Implications for the Bar
The court’s opinion includes broader observations about the duties of appellate advocates. “Our adversarial system works only when lawyers and courts alike are able to rely on one another’s representations,” the court wrote, quoting the Supreme Court’s decision in Azar v. Garza.
The court emphasized that citation of fake cases harms not only the court but also the reputation of judges whose names are falsely invoked as authors of fabricated opinions, and parties attributed with fictional conduct. It noted that the misconduct in this case “forced us and the City to unnecessarily expend time and resources on a case that should have been litigated and resolved straightforwardly but was not.”
“By breaching our trust, we can no longer rely on the representations in Irion’s and Egli’s briefs, harming both their clients (whose cases are now viewed with skepticism) and this court (who must now independently verify everything Irion and Egli write),” the court wrote. “Finally, Irion and Egli have sullied the reputation of our bar, which now must litigate under the cloud of their conduct.”
AI Use Not Directly Determined
Although the court’s show cause order asked whether gen AI was used to prepare the briefs, Irion and Egli did not answer this question.
The court noted in a footnote that AI hallucinations “are more likely to occur when there are little to no existing authorities available that clearly satisfy the user’s request — such as, for example, when a lawyer asks a generative AI tool to supply a citation for an unsupported principle of law,” quoting a recent bankruptcy court decision.
However, the court did not make an express finding that AI was used, instead focusing on the fact that the citations were fabricated regardless of how they were generated.
“No brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations — whether provided by generative AI or any other source — that” a lawyer has not personally “read and verified,” the court wrote, quoting the California Court of Appeal’s decision in Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P.