Richard LaRoche v. Darla Sterett (LaRoche)
Richard LaRoche v. Darla Sterett (LaRoche) is one matter in the Veritas record of US court proceedings involving AI-generated citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The summary below is drawn from the underlying court document, linked at the foot of this page.
- Court
- Vermont SC
- Date
- November 13, 2025
- Party
- Lawyer
- AI tool
- Not identified in the order
- Outcome
- Professional sanction under V.R.A.P. 25(d)(3) for failure to verify a contention
- Penalty
- No monetary penalty in this order.
What the record shows
The Vermont Supreme Court concluded that Attorney Donald P. LoCascio violated Vermont Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b)(2) by failing to make a reasonable inquiry into the accuracy of a legal contention in his brief. The brief included a quotation attributed to a case that did not appear in the opinion; counsel attributed the language to an AI 'helper' he failed to verify. The court imposed a sanction under Vermont Rule of Appellate Procedure 25(d)(3).
This entry reflects the court document as filed. The citations at issue could not be located in the reporters named at the time of the order. The reading here is descriptive of the public record and is not legal advice.
Source documents
The test this filing did not run
Every matter in this record shares one mechanism: a citation that did not resolve to an opinion in the reporter named, in a brief that was filed before any verification step ran. Veritas runs that step. The Filing Risk Scanner extracts each citation, resolves it against reporter and public-record sources, and returns a verdict on each one — located, partial, or not located in reporter — before the brief is signed.
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