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.
Editor Notes: All four reported sanctioned attorneys are included as alleged deployers because the court treated them as responsible for filings containing purportedly hallucinated citations. The sanctions order reportedly tied direct AI use to Kathleen M. Wilson and Kathryn Y. Williams, while Shauncey Hunter Ridgeway and Mark McClinton were sanctioned for failing to verify filings they signed or authorized. Timeline notes: Incident ID date of 11/05/2025 is based on the earliest clearly identified filing associated with hallucinated legal citations in the sanctions order. The court entered an order to show cause on 12/10/2025, held a hearing on 01/20/2026, and issued sanctions on 06/08/2026. The incident ID was created 06/16/2026. See: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/lgvdgrbjxpo/Withers%20v%20Aberdeen%20-%20AI%20sanctions%20order%20-%2020260608.pdf.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Large language model developers , First Drafts and AI legal research tool developers developed an AI system deployed by Shauncey Hunter Ridgeway , Mark McClinton , Lawyers , Kathryn Y. Williams and Kathleen M. Wilson, which harmed Tom Withers III , Judicial integrity , Epistemic integrity and City of Aberdeen, Mississippi.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1533
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-11-05
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
Loading...
A federal judge in Mississippi has punished all four lawyers on opposing sides in a civil trial and canceled the proceedings after some of them, relying on artificial intelligence, cited fake legal cases in court filings.
Two of the lawyers…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
Seen something similar?
Similar Incidents
Did our AI mess up? Flag the unrelated incidents
Similar Incidents
Did our AI mess up? Flag the unrelated incidents