Was State v. Coleman sanctioned over AI-generated citations?

State v. Coleman (Ohio CA (11th), March 20, 2026) is a documented matter involving citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The recorded outcome was: Monetary sanction: $2,000 (credited); professional discipline. $2,000 in monetary penalties.

Which AI tool was involved in State v. Coleman?

The matter records ChatGPT as the generative tool associated with the unverified citations in State v. Coleman.

March 20, 2026 · AI sanctions database

State v. Coleman

State v. Coleman 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: Ohio CA (11th)
Date: March 20, 2026
Party: Lawyer
AI tool: ChatGPT
Outcome: Monetary sanction: $2,000 (credited); professional discipline
Penalty: $2,000 in monetary penalties.

Bar referralDisqualificationFineProfessional sanction

What the record shows

The court found the application to reopen relied on quotes attributed to the prosecutor and to the trial transcript that did not exist, and respondent admitted a staff member used AI tools that generated hallucinated quotes. The court ordered respondent to pay a $2,000 monetary sanction, crediting the $2,000 already paid under a settlement, alongside additional measures.

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

Primary court document ↗

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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Filed under · AI sanctions database · Ohio CA (11th)

About this publication

Veritas is a pre-filing citation verification platform for law firms and in-house counsel. Every post on the audit log is written by the Veritas editorial team and cross-checked against the underlying sanctions order, standing order, or published opinion it references. Reporter citations are read in their named volumes. Quotations from court orders are checked against the docket.

The product was built by Andrew Zoll, founder of Veritas, who tracks generative AI sanctions in federal and state courts and turns each documented failure mode into verification logic the scanner runs. Veritas was built after the canonical Mata v. Avianca sanctions order made the verification gap a published failure mode of the bar.

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