Sixteen Fake Quotes Cost $2,500 In The Fifth Circuit. Three Cost Nothing In The Fourth.
Line the 2026 appellate orders up next to each other and the fabrication count turns out to be nearly irrelevant. What decides the outcome is the circuit, and one of the four has not taken a dollar from anybody.
The district court stories are the ones that travel. A number, a red faced apology, a headline. What has been happening quietly above them is more interesting, because the federal courts of appeals spent 2026 answering the same question over and over and did not arrive at the same answer once.
Six published appellate decisions. Four circuits. In every one of them a lawyer put citations or quotations in a brief that did not exist. The penalties range from nothing to a suspension.
The six
| Case | Circuit | What was fabricated | What it cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fletcher v. Experian Info Solutions, No. 25-20086 | Fifth, Feb 18 2026 | 16 fabricated quotations and 5 serious misrepresentations of law or fact | $2,500 |
| In re Eric Chibueze Nwaubani | Fourth, Mar 2026 | 3 nonexistent cases | Public admonishment |
| Whiting v. City of Athens, Tennessee | Sixth, Mar 2026 | Over two dozen fake citations across three consolidated appeals, which the panel called a conservative estimate | Attorneys fees, double costs, $15,000 punitive each, referral to the Chief Judge |
| United States v. Farris | Sixth, 2026 | Fabricated quotations attributed to real cases, holdings misrepresented | Removed from the case, denied all Criminal Justice Act compensation, multiple referrals |
| Fivehouse v. U.S. Department of Defense | Fourth, Apr 2026 | Fabricated quotations from multiple Fourth Circuit opinions | Public reprimand |
| Lnu v. Blanche, No. 24-4790 | Ninth, Jun 3 2026 | Nonexistent opinions and fake quotations from real ones | $2,500 each and a six month suspension from practice before the court |
Now read the third column against the fourth and try to find the relationship.
Three fabricated cases in the Fourth Circuit produced a public admonishment. Sixteen fabricated quotations plus five misrepresentations in the Fifth produced $2,500. That is more than five times the fabrications for a penalty the Fourth Circuit did not impose at all.
The Fourth Circuit does not take money
Both of the Fourth Circuit orders on this list end in words. Nwaubani got a public admonishment. Fivehouse got a public reprimand. Neither one carries a dollar figure.
That is a coherent position and it is worth stating fairly rather than mocking. A published order with a lawyer’s name on it is a permanent, searchable professional record, and for a practitioner who depends on referrals it can cost considerably more over a career than any four figure fine. The Fourth Circuit appears to believe the reputational sanction is the sanction.
The problem is that it only works if anybody reads it, and the lawyer in the next case is in a different circuit and has never heard of either one.
The Sixth Circuit does take money, and then keeps going
Whiting is the outlier at the other end, and the numbers are stacked rather than singular. Attorneys fees to the other side. Double costs. $15,000 in punitive sanctions from each attorney. A referral to the Chief Judge of the circuit for discipline.
The panel was looking at over two dozen fake citations across three consolidated appeals and said in the order that two dozen was a conservative estimate, which is a judicial way of saying nobody finished counting.
Farris is the more instructive of the two Sixth Circuit cases, because the lawyer did everything right after doing the thing wrong. He was candid with the court. He had a clean disciplinary record over forty years. The panel said so explicitly and then removed him from the case anyway, denied every dollar of his Criminal Justice Act compensation for the appeal, and referred him to multiple judicial and bar authorities.
Denying CJA compensation is the detail to sit with. This was appointed criminal defense work. The court did not fine him. It refused to pay him, which in an appointed case is the same money moving in the other direction and is not capped by anything.
The Ninth Circuit found the expensive one
Lnu v. Blanche came out of Orange County in June. Two attorneys, briefs citing opinions that do not exist and quotations that were never written. The fine is $2,500 each, which puts it at the bottom of this table.
The rest of the order does not.
Both lawyers were suspended from practice before the Ninth Circuit for six months and ordered to notify their clients, opposing counsel and the judges in every other pending case that this had happened.
Six months of not being able to file in the federal appellate court covering California is not a $2,500 event for a practice that does federal appellate work. Neither is having to write to every judge you currently appear in front of and explain why.
The order is also careful about what it is punishing, and the panel put the line in plain language:
Lawyers using generative AI must thus be aware of the tendency of generative AI to make these mistakes and guard against them.
The court said it was not sanctioning anyone for using AI. It sanctioned them for filing what came out of it without checking, and for not disclosing that the inaccuracies came from an unauthorized tool used by an unlicensed law school graduate at the firm.
And sometimes the answer is nothing at all
One more data point, from a district court rather than an appellate one. Gamez v. County of Fresno, Eastern District of California, April 2026. Nonexistent citations. Fabricated quotations. No sanctions imposed.
Same conduct as every row in the table above, and the file closed without a penalty.
What this actually means
There is no going rate. Anyone telling a lawyer what an AI citation error costs is guessing, because the six published appellate answers in a single year range from a paragraph of disapproval to a half year suspension.
The count does not drive the number. Sixteen fabrications drew $2,500 and three drew nothing. What seems to move a panel is not volume but what happened after the discovery: Fletcher’s sanction order specifically records evasive answers to the court’s questions, and Farris’s specifically records candor and still ended in removal.
The money is the least of it. Every genuinely severe outcome on this list is non monetary. Removal from a case. Denied compensation. A suspension. A referral to the people who decide whether someone keeps practicing. The fines are the part that gets reported and the smallest part of the actual bill.
A circuit split on price is still a circuit split. Nobody is going to take this one up, because it is discretion under FRAP 46(c) and inherent power rather than a question of law. It just sits there, and the effective penalty for the same act depends on a map.
What to watch
Whether the Fourth Circuit ever writes a check. Two orders, two reprimands, no money. The third one is the interesting one.
Whether suspension spreads. The Ninth Circuit found the penalty that actually bites and it costs the court nothing to impose. If other circuits notice that, the fine stops being the headline.
Whether anyone gets a second one. Every decision on this list is a first offense. Nothing published yet tells us what a court does with a lawyer who has already been sanctioned for this once.