On September 9, the New Mexico Supreme Court fined a defense attorney $5,000 and held him in direct contempt over an appeal brief written with AI. The brief, in a murder appeal, cited testimony from police officers and other witnesses who didn’t exist. It invented details about the defendant’s appearance, quoted threats no one made, and cited case law with no basis in reality.
The court referred the attorney to the state’s disciplinary board and barred him from appearing before it while that proceeds. It had already ordered him to withdraw as counsel. According to news reports, he admitted he didn’t verify the facts or the legal authority in the brief before filing it. The court also faulted him for not telling his client about the errors.
The ruling capped a pattern. In April, the Albuquerque Journal reported that courts had found AI-fabricated sources in at least seven New Mexico lawsuits since 2023, and had more often issued warnings than sanctions. Federal judges in the state had already fined filers $1,500 and $8,640 in separate cases. One state district judge began requiring anyone who uses generative AI on a filing to disclose it at the top of the document and certify that the AI-drafted language was checked, either against legal databases or by a person.
In none of these cases did a court blame the tool. Every sanction landed on the person who filed.
Why this matters outside the courtroom
The same failure can happen in any document that carries a signature: a grant application, a regulatory filing, a procurement justification, a board memo, a public records response. AI drafts fluently, and an invented detail reads exactly like a real one. Courts have judges who check citations. Inside an organization, that check has to be assigned to someone.
The New Mexico district judge’s rule, disclose the AI use and then certify that it was checked, works as an internal policy too.
A verification policy in five lines
- Say which documents may be drafted with AI, and which may not.
- Require the drafter to tell the signer when AI was used.
- Check every citation, quote, figure, and named person against its source, not against the AI’s own summary.
- Make the person who signs accountable for that check, by name.
- If an error gets out, tell the people affected promptly.
The tool wrote the brief. The lawyer signed it. The court only cared about the second part.
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