Kleyman Law Group v. Kaloidis

What happened

Kleyman Law Group v. Kaloidis, Index No. 502644/2025, is a suit filed January 24, 2025 seeking $1,246,000 in unpaid legal fees from the estate of a former client. Alex I. Kleyman represented his own firm. Across 19 submissions, including affirmations, memoranda, letters and a proposed order to show cause, he cited 23 fictitious decisions on 47 occasions and misstated the holdings of at least 83 genuine decisions. Defense counsel raised the problem in a June 6, 2025 affirmation, and further affected filings followed.

By order of April 13, the court in Kleyman v. Kaloidis found the filings frivolous under 22 N.Y.C.R.R. 130-1.1 and set a hearing on sanctions and referral. At that June 9 hearing Kleyman testified that from April to December 2025 he used "Claude" and other generative AI platforms to prepare the submissions. He said he could not afford Lexis or Westlaw, that this was his first use of such tools, and that he did not know they could fabricate authority. He conceded he could have checked the cases through a free search service. After opposing counsel questioned the citations, he used the same AI platforms to verify them; later, having resumed using Lexis, he still did not check the challenged material.

What the court did

On August 4, Justice Heela D. Capell applied the "constellation of factors" from a Third Department decision, Deutsche Bank v. LeTennier. The Kleyman v. Kaloidis decision states that counsel's conduct "seem[s] to exceed most, if not all, published cases on this topic to date," and notes that he used AI "puzzlingly, to verify the accuracy" of his filings once they were challenged. Against that it weighed his apology, his acceptance of responsibility, his financial constraints and the absence of known prior discipline.

The order in Kleyman v. Kaloidis made the firm and its principal jointly and severally liable for a $10,000 sanction, the maximum per occurrence under 22 N.Y.C.R.R. 130-1.2, payable to the Lawyers' Fund for Client Protection. It also awarded defense counsel $36,511.35 in fees and costs, reflecting about 80 hours of work tracing the false authorities. Finding a substantial likelihood of substantial violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct, the court referred Kleyman to the Grievance Committee for the Second, Eleventh and Thirteenth Judicial Districts. The decision cites Mata v. Avianca among comparable federal sanctions.

The decision is available as a PDF copy.

Where it stands

Payment of the sanction and the fee award was due within 30 days of filing, with proof of payment due within 15 days after that. Proof of payment, the outcome of the grievance referral and the status of the underlying fee claim in Kleyman v. Kaloidis were not located as of October 30.

The obligation it engaged

Kleyman v. Kaloidis is a clear instance of the conduct Clause 3 of the Standard, independent authority, is written to prevent. The confirmation step was performed, but against the same system that had produced the citations. Asking a system to confirm its own output is not confirmation against an independent source. Clause 4, checkability before adoption, is engaged as well. Every citation could have been checked through a free search service, as counsel conceded at the hearing.

The lesson for an expert is that cost and unfamiliarity with the tool did not reduce the sanction to a nominal one. When a report's sources are challenged, the response that holds up is a fresh check against primary sources, documented as it is done. Returning to the tool that produced the problem only adds to the record against its user.

Sources

• Supreme Court of the State of New York, Kings County (Westlaw copy hosted by Damien Charlotin's AI Hallucination Cases database) · August 4, 2026
  Kleyman Law Group, P.C. v. Kaloidis, No. 502644/2025, Decision and Order after Hearing

What could not be confirmed

The April 13, 2026 frivolous-conduct order was not opened; its contents are taken from the August 4 decision. A database listing dates an earlier order in the case April 3, 2026, which differs from the April 13 date in the decision. Proof of payment, the grievance outcome and the status of the fee claim were not located as of October 30, 2026. The AI tools other than Claude are not named.