Incident #1533

Four Lawyers Reportedly Sanctioned After Purportedly AI-Related Hallucinated Citations Appeared in Withers v. City of Aberdeen

November 5, 20251 reportsView on AIID

Description

In Withers v. City of Aberdeen, a federal judge in Mississippi reportedly sanctioned four lawyers after filings from both sides contained purportedly hallucinated legal citations linked to unverified AI use. The court said Kathleen Wilson used First Drafts to draft a filing and Kathryn Williams used an AI legal-research tool; all four attorneys were removed from the case and fined.

Actors

Alleged Deployers

shauncey-hunter-ridgeway
mark-mcclinton
lawyers
kathryn-y.-williams
kathleen-m.-wilson

Alleged Developers

large-language-model-developers
first-drafts
ai-research-tool-developers

Harmed Parties

tom-withers-iii
judicial-integrity
epistemic-integrity
city-of-aberdeen-mississippi

Classification

Source

Databaseaiid

LicenseCC BY-SA 4.0

View on AIID

Source Reports(1 total)

Judge Punishes 4 Lawyers After Catching Both Sides Using A.I. in Lawsuit

nytimes.com· Jun 2026