Was Yanling Zhang v. Yanhui Zhang sanctioned over AI-generated citations?

Yanling Zhang v. Yanhui Zhang (SC Nevada, April 22, 2026) is a documented matter involving citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The recorded outcome was: Monetary sanction: $250; referral to state bar; request to correct brief denied. $250 in monetary penalties.

Which AI tool was involved in Yanling Zhang v. Yanhui Zhang?

The order in Yanling Zhang v. Yanhui Zhang does not identify a specific generative tool by name. The court treated the citations as the product of an unverified AI-assisted drafting workflow.

April 22, 2026 · AI sanctions database

Yanling Zhang v. Yanhui Zhang

Yanling Zhang v. Yanhui Zhang 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: SC Nevada
Date: April 22, 2026
Party: Lawyer
AI tool: Not identified in the order
Outcome: Monetary sanction: $250; referral to state bar; request to correct brief denied
Penalty: $250 in monetary penalties.

FineBar referralProfessional sanction

What the record shows

The Supreme Court of Nevada found that attorney Michael Lin included fictional or misleading citations in his opening brief, in violation of the appellate rules. The court ordered Lin to pay $250 to the Supreme Court Law Library, referred him to the State Bar of Nevada for investigation of potential professional-conduct violations, and denied his request to correct the opening brief.

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 · SC Nevada

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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