By Bill Hartzer · Published · How this site is researched
What happened
Three involuntary bankruptcy petitions were filed against jointly administered debtors. Counsel for the petitioning creditors, Gregory W. Mitchell, filed motions to quash Rule 2004 examination requests. The motions contained fabricated quotations, non-existent citations and invented legal authority.
What distinguishes this matter is the defense offered. Mitchell denied using ChatGPT. He attributed the citations to the "Precision" version of Westlaw, a legal research vendor's own generative feature, and asserted that he had never encountered problems with it.
What the court did
The court rejected the distinction, holding that counsel's "suggestion that the 'Precision' version of Westlaw... should be given different treatment from non-legal AI tools" was itself telling.
It granted the trustee's motion to enforce and supplemental motion, and found: a violation of Rule 11(b) through Bankruptcy Rule 9011; a violation of an earlier order of April 30, 2026; civil contempt; and bad-faith conduct abusing the judicial process, warranting sanctions under the court's inherent power and 11 U.S.C. section 105.
It ordered Mitchell to obtain six hours of State Bar of Texas continuing legal education on the use of generative artificial intelligence in the courts and to file a certificate of compliance. It held Mitchell and the petitioning creditors jointly and severally liable to the Chapter 7 trustee for $29,877.00 in itemized attorneys' fees and costs.
Where it stands
The memorandum opinion was signed July 14, 2026, with a conforming order entered the same day. Compliance was due August 31, 2026. No appeal was located as of September 17, 2026.
The obligation it engaged
The holding an expert needs from this case is the one about the vendor. A tool sold into a profession, trained on that profession's materials and marketed as reliable for that profession's work, is still a system whose output requires checking. The court treated the argument that it deserved different treatment as evidence of the underlying misunderstanding.
That reasoning transfers exactly. An expert using a domain tool sold to engineers, to forensic accountants, to radiologists, is in the position Mitchell was in. The domain branding is not a substitute for Clause 3 of the Standard, independent authority, which requires every citation, figure and characterization to be confirmed against a source that exists independently of the system. Nor is it a substitute for Clause 4, checkability before adoption, which asks what the output would be checked against before it is adopted at all.
Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is the other half. The record is supposed to name each system used and the purpose. Counsel's account of which system produced what came after the fact, under a show-cause order, and the court did not credit it.
Sources
- U.S. Bankruptcy Court, S.D. Tex. · July 14, 2026
Memorandum opinion, In re Rosslyn2016, LLC, Doc. 312 - Damien Charlotin · September 17, 2026
AI Hallucination Cases database
What could not be confirmed
The attribution to the "Precision" version of Westlaw is counsel's own assertion as recorded in the opinion; the court did not make a finding that the vendor's tool produced the citations. Whether the CLE was completed, the fees paid, or an appeal taken was not located.
About this entry
This entry was checked against the primary document listed in the sources. The entry for In re Rosslyn2016 records conduct and what the tribunal did. It does not characterize a holding and it is not legal advice. Last checked September 17, 2026. More matters like this one are collected under hallucinated citations and facts. If something here is out of date, write to [email protected].