Fletcher v. Experian (Fifth Circuit sanction)

What happened

Robert Fletcher sued Experian Information Solutions and Bridgecrest Credit Company in the Southern District of Texas and appealed the judgment against him to the Fifth Circuit. His counsel, Heather Hersh, filed a reply brief.

The sequence that follows is the one worth studying, because it is the mechanism by which these matters become sanctions rather than corrections. The court did not sanction counsel on discovering the problems in the brief. On December 18, 2025 it issued a show-cause order, which is an invitation to explain. Two months passed between that order and the opinion. The sanction came out of what counsel filed in that window.

What the court did

In a published opinion issued February 18, 2026, authored by Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, the court made two findings.

The first concerned the brief. The court determined that counsel "used artificial intelligence to draft a substantial portion, if not all, of her reply brief and then failed to verify the accuracy of the content generated." Note what the finding covers: not that a tool was used, but that it was used to produce the substance of the filing and that nobody checked the result.

The second concerned the response. The court found that "she was not forthcoming in her response to the show-cause order."

It ordered: "IT IS ORDERED that Heather Hersh shall pay $2,500 in sanctions to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit within 30 days of this order." The sanction rests on Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 46(c), which reaches conduct unbecoming a member of the bar, and on the court's inherent power. The money is payable to the court rather than to the opposing party, which marks it as a disciplinary measure rather than a fee shift.

Where it stands

Fletcher v. Experian is published and the sanction was imposed. No later modification, and no disciplinary proceeding arising from it, was located as of September 17, 2026.

The Fifth Circuit has now produced two of the instruments in this area. Fletcher v. Experian is one. The AI certification requirement that originated with Judge Brantley Starr in the Northern District of Texas, and the circuit's treatment of it, is the other; that history is collected at Judge Starr's AI certificate and the Fifth Circuit rule.

The obligation it engaged

The two findings in Fletcher v. Experian are separate, and the second one is what recurs across every matter collected on this site. Using the tool without verification engaged Clause 3 of the Standard, independent authority. Responding to the court's inquiry in a way the court found not forthcoming engaged Clause 8, disclosure.

Courts have differed on almost everything else in this area. They have not differed on this. The tool draws a warning or a modest fine. The answer about the tool draws the suspension, the referral and the published opinion. Compare Lnu v. Blanche, where counsel denied AI use at oral argument and were suspended for six months.

An expert meets the same fork in a deposition, and meets it without the two months Fletcher v. Experian gave counsel between the show-cause order and the opinion. Asked how a figure was produced, or what systems were used on the engagement, the expert answers from what he has. The asymmetry is the same: a complete answer about a mistake is survivable, and a managed one is not. Clause 8 is designed to remove the temptation entirely by putting the commitment in the engagement letter, before anyone has a reason to shade an answer. Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what makes the complete answer available in the moment it is demanded.

Sources

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · February 18, 2026
  Fletcher v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc., No. 25-20086

What could not be confirmed

The opinion does not name the artificial intelligence product. Whether the sanction was paid, and whether any disciplinary referral followed, were not located.