Was USA v. Michel sanctioned over AI-generated citations?

USA v. Michel (D.C., August 30, 2024) is a documented matter involving citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The recorded outcome was: No sanction; AI argument rejected on merits. No monetary penalty in this order.

Which AI tool was involved in USA v. Michel?

The matter records EyeLevel as the generative tool associated with the unverified citations in USA v. Michel.

August 30, 2024 · AI sanctions database

USA v. Michel

USA v. Michel 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: D.C.
Date: August 30, 2024
Party: Lawyer
AI tool: EyeLevel
Outcome: No sanction; AI argument rejected on merits
Penalty: No monetary penalty in this order.

What the record shows

In ruling on the defendant's motion for a new trial, the court addressed an allegation that trial counsel had relied on an AI tool; the supplied excerpts indicate the court treated any misattribution as not affecting the outcome. The provided text does not reflect any monetary or disciplinary sanction arising from AI use.

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 · D.C.

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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