By Bill Hartzer · Published · How this site is researched
What happened
The matter is a Hague Convention child-return proceeding. The petitioner, acting without counsel, moved to seal. The court had already ordered that if he refiled the motion he must submit a one-page certification either that the motion was prepared without AI tools or, if AI was used, disclose which tools were used, list all prompts and documents that were input into them, and certify that every citation had been verified by him as authentic and accurate.
He then disclosed that he had uploaded his redacted documents to non-enterprise versions of Claude and Claude Cowork.
What the court did
The court granted the motion to seal in part and denied it in part. It allowed narrowly tailored redactions for minor children's and other personal identifiers, nonparty identifying information and sensitive medical information, and required disclosure of other substantive and already-public material.
Its stated ground on the AI point was that documents and information uploaded to Claude are processed on Anthropic's servers, and that Anthropic's data privacy and data training pages make clear that such information is not private. It followed that it would be inappropriate for the court to seal a document that had already been provided to a private, for-profit research and artificial intelligence company.
The consequence is worth stating plainly, because it is not a sanction and is easily missed. Nobody was fined. The party simply lost the ability to keep material sealed, because he had already handed it to someone else. Confidentiality that has been given away cannot be ordered back.
Where it stands
The order was entered August 27, 2026. No appeal was located as of September 28, 2026.
The certification the court required is as significant as the sealing ruling. A demand to list all prompts and all documents input into a system, signed by the person who used it, is the disclosure obligation the profession has been debating, imposed by a single judge in a single case. Conservation Law Foundation v. Shell reached the same material through a motion to compel; this court reached it by standing order.
The obligation it engaged
This is Clause 6, custody and confidentiality, with the clearest consequence in the record. The clause asks the expert to establish, before any material is submitted, what leaves the environment and who retains it. Here the answer was discoverable in advance from the provider's own published pages, and the cost of not having asked was the loss of sealing.
The certification engages Clause 7, contemporaneous record, and Clause 8, disclosure, together. Listing every prompt and every document input is only possible from a record made at the time, and the order converts what the Standard treats as a professional obligation into a filing requirement.
Sources
- AI Discovery Database (Damien Charlotin) · September 28, 2026
Fry v. Fry
What could not be confirmed
The docket suffix KSM is consistent with Judge Karen Spencer Marston, who is named in the document; this has not been confirmed against the docket. Whether the certification requirement has been applied in other matters before this judge was not determined.
About this entry
This entry was checked against the primary document listed in the sources. The entry for Fry v. Fry records conduct and what the tribunal did. It does not characterize a holding and it is not legal advice. Last checked September 28, 2026. More matters like this one are collected under the AI evidence matters. If something here is out of date, write to [email protected].