Virgil v. Experian Information Solutions

What happened

Virgil v. Experian Information Solutions is a consumer credit action, No. 1:25-cv-01641, originally filed against forty-seven defendants. It is a different matter from the Fifth Circuit's Fletcher v. Experian. Plaintiff's counsel, James Policchio, filed a response to two defendants' motion to dismiss bearing his and his co-counsel's signatures. The defendants' reply flagged six citations that appeared fabricated and four that appeared to misstate holdings, and identified two more nonexistent cases in earlier filings. One week later counsel filed another response that also cited nonexistent cases.

Magistrate Judge Mark Dinsmore ordered both lawyers to show cause under Rule 11(b) and to list every case cited in their filings, certifying each as accurate, inaccurate or nonexistent. Across five filings (Docket Nos. 115, 240, 289, 294 and 331) the total was eleven nonexistent and four inaccurate citations. The last of those filings came seven days after the defendants first raised the problem.

At the show-cause hearing counsel took full responsibility. He said co-counsel had no part in drafting or reviewing the briefs and had not given permission for his signature to be used. He attributed the errors to being "overwhelmed by [his] workload," to having terminated his LexisNexis research account, and to "cutting and pasting" from documents in a prior case.

What the court did

The magistrate judge recommended a personal sanction of $10,000 under Rule 11 for "filing five briefs that contained citations to non-existent cases" (Docket No. 395). Counsel did not object. On September 11 the district court reviewed for clear error, found none, and adopted the recommendation in the order at Docket No. 447, directing payment to the Clerk of Court within thirty days.

The Virgil order notes that counsel did not cite generative AI use, but observes that his explanation does not readily account for nonexistent citations, which it described, quoting the Seventh Circuit, as often "hallmarks of AI hallucinations." It then set the source aside: whether or not AI was involved, counsel alone was responsible for compliance with Rule 11. It compared the amount with recent sanctions of $2,000, $5,000 and $6,000 and a public admonishment, and found the pattern here more serious: five briefs over two months, one filed after the problem was reported.

Separately, because the conduct may violate the Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct, the magistrate judge notified the Chief Judge, who referred the matter to the Indiana Attorney Disciplinary Commission (Docket No. 399).

Where it stands

The order adopting the recommendation fixes the sanction in Virgil v. Experian; it sanctions only Policchio and does not address the status of the underlying claims. Payment and the Disciplinary Commission's handling of the referral were not located as of October 30. No appeal from the sanction order was located.

The obligation it engaged

Virgil v. Experian engages Clause 3 of the Standard, independent authority, whether or not a system produced the citations. Text cut and pasted from a prior matter still enters the work on another document's authority, and every citation in it needed confirming against the reported decision. The court made the same point about the source: verification is owed regardless of how a citation was generated.

Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is the second clause. The show-cause order in Virgil required counsel to reconstruct, case by case, which citations were accurate. A professional who logs sources as they are checked can produce that list from the file. For an expert, the comparable exposure is a report template carried from one engagement to the next. Citations, figures and quotations inherited from an earlier report should be verified again before they are signed, because a tribunal will treat them as the expert's own.

Sources

• U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana (copy hosted by the AI Hallucination Cases database, Damien Charlotin) · September 11, 2026
  Virgil v. Experian Information Solutions Inc., No. 1:25-cv-01641, Order Adopting Report and Recommendation (Doc. 447)

What could not be confirmed

Counsel did not cite generative AI use and the court made no finding that AI was used. The adopting district judge's name does not appear in the text reviewed. The magistrate judge's report and recommendation (Docket No. 395) and the Chief Judge's referral (Docket No. 399) were not opened; their contents are taken from the adopting order. Payment, any appeal, and the outcome of the disciplinary referral were not located as of October 30, 2026.