Maine · federal district court · 2025
District Court, D. Maine, 24 July 2025 to 9 September 2025. What the court wrote about citations that did not exist, in its own words, from 3 documents on file.
Case record · D. Me.
Retrieved · the text below was read from the source documents on that day.
The passages in which the court addresses the fabricated authority, verbatim, by document. A bracketed ellipsis marks where a passage was cut for length; nothing else is changed.
Docket text. ORDER ISSUING COK WARNING By JUDGE JOHN A. WOODCOCK, JR. (CCS) (Entered: 09/09/2025)
Id. at 79-80. Amid this flurry, on July 11, 2025, the Court identified several incorrect or fabricated citations in Mr. Beall’s filings and directed him to explain the citation errors and any reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) software within seven days.
Docket text. ORDER ON PLAINTIFFS MOTION FOR SANCTIONS AND COURTS ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE terminating 90 Order to Show Cause; dismissing 85 Plaintiffs' Motion for Sanctions Due to Defendants Use of Fictitious Case Citations By JUDGE JOHN A. WOODCOCK, JR. (CCS) (Entered: 07/24/2025)
Beall had allegedly included fictious case citations in recent filing s. Pls.’ Mot. for Sanctions Due to Def.’s Use of Fictitious Case Citations (ECF No. 85) (Pls.’ Sanctions Mot. ).
2 Plaintiffs contend that Mr. Beall may have relied on artificial intelligence ( AI) software to generate these erroneous citations and submit that federal and state precedent support imposing Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 sanctions for fabricating citations. Id. at 4-6.
Mr. Beall opposed the Plaintiffs’ motion on July 11, 2025 , reiterating his version of the facts underlying this proceeding but failing or declining to address the allegation of fabricated and factitious citations . See Def.’s Resp. to Pls.’ Mot. for Sanctions (ECF No.
He explains that he relied on AI software to “look up legal terms, procedures, and authorities” without realizing that the software he was using “used example data, placeholders, and hypothetical cases to demonstrate functionality.” Id. at 2. He avers he used AI software to assist his drafting process and keep organized, but that he did not realize the software generated “invented or hallucinated citations.” Id. He asks the Court to not impose sanctions or a Cok filing restriction and promises he “will personally verify every case [he] cite[s] moving forward [and] will not use AI to insert legal quotations unless [he] can confirm them word -for-word.” Id. at 3.
Beall include a written representation that he has personally checked each legal citation and each citation is accurate and stands for its asserted proposition. The Court further DISMISSES without prejudice Plaintiffs’ Motion for Sanctions Due to Defendant’s Use of Fictitious Case Citations (ECF No. 85) as mooted by the Court’s order imposing a certification requirement on Mr.
Docket text. OMNIBUS ORDER AND ORDER STAYING CASE dismissing 28 Motion ; granting 31 Motion to Vacate ; dismissing 36 Motion ; dismissing 46 Motion to Strike ; dismissing 51 Motion ; granting 52 Motion for Leave to File; dismissing 52 Motion ; dismissing 54 Motion to Amend. ; dismissing 55 Motion for Sanctions; dismissing 61 Motion to Strike ; dismissing 64 Motion ; dismissing 68 Motion ; dismissing 71 Motion to Dismiss; dismissing 75 Motion ; granting in part and dismissing in part 76 Motion to Seal; granting 83 Motion for Conference of Counsel; dismissing 85 Motion for Sanctions; dismissing 108 Motion to Compel; dismissing 111 Motion to Seal; dismissing 112 Motion to Unseal Document ; granting 116 Motion for Conference of Counsel; dismissing 119 Motion to Compel; dismissing 134 Motion for Order; dismissing 135 Motion for Oral Argument/Hearing; dismissing 27 Motion for Default Judgment By JUDGE JOHN A. WOODCOCK, JR. (CCS) (Entered: 07/24/2025)
Beall had allegedly included fictious case citations in recent filing s. Pls.’ Mot. for Sanctions Due to Def.’s Use of Fictitious Case Citations (ECF No. 85) (Pls.’ Sanctions Mot.).
Shortly thereafter, the Court issued an order to show cause to Mr. Beall, informing him that the Court’s independent review had identified numerous incorrect and fabricated citations in his recent filings and directing him to respond to explain the basis for his citation errors and any reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) software within seven days. Order to Show Cause (ECF No.
Plaintiffs next emphasize that Mr. Beall’s asserted counterclaims rely on fictitious citations, as detailed in their July 10, 2025 motion for sanctions. Id. at 2 (citing Pls.’ Sanctions Mot.).
See Pls.’ Cok Mot. The Court recognizes that the Plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions for use of fictitious cases, as well as its order to show cause and Mr. Beall’s response, implicate similar concerns; however, as the Court contemporaneously issu es a separate order specifically addressing the motion for sanctions for fictitious case citations and its order to show cause, it does not address the merits of those filings here.
Pattern matches on the documents' text. Each line is a fact that the text contains the words, not a finding about the case.
This page is a record, not legal advice. It quotes the documents on file and lists what their text mentions. Read the decision at the source before relying on it, and check whether a later order changed it.
More from District Court, D. Maine, from Maine, or from 2025. The whole record is at court decisions on AI-hallucinated citations.
Every case in this record shares one cause: a citation reached a court without anyone opening it. What a citation gate is explains the mechanism that makes that impossible by construction; how to check an AI citation in five minutes is the manual version; the sanctions record is the essay this table grew out of.