Garner v. Kadince
Court sanctionUtah Court of Appeals · Utah Ct. App. · Decided May 29, 2025
- Citation:
- Garner v. Kadince, 2025 UT App 80, No. 20250188-CA (Utah Ct. App. May 29, 2025)
- AI tool:
- ChatGPT
- Sanction amount:
- Attorney fees + client fee refund + $1,000 to access-to-justice nonprofit
What happened
Attorney Richard Bednar signed and filed a petition for appeal drafted by a law clerk using ChatGPT. The brief cited multiple cases that did not exist or were substantively misrepresented, including a fabricated "Royer v. Nelson" citation. Bednar acknowledged at the order-to-show-cause hearing that a law clerk had used ChatGPT without his knowledge and that he had not reviewed the citations before signing.
Outcome
Bednar ordered to pay respondents' attorney fees, refund all fees charged to the client for the petition within seven days, and pay $1,000 to 'and Justice for All' (a Utah access-to-justice nonprofit) within fourteen days. The Court held that attorneys have a non-delegable duty to verify each source cited in their filings and that reliance on a law clerk's AI use is not a defense -- it is itself an RPC 5.3 supervision failure. Utah's first published appellate ruling on AI-hallucinated citations.
Garner v. Kadince is the first published Utah appellate opinion sanctioning AI-hallucinated citations. The Court’s holding is direct: “the legal profession must be cautious of AI due to its tendency to hallucinate information. While technology continues to evolve, attorneys must verify each source cited in their legal filings.” The decision makes the supervising attorney’s verification duty non-delegable under Utah RPC 5.3 — “a law clerk used ChatGPT” is an admission of a supervision failure, not a mitigating circumstance.
Primary sources
Last verified: April 24, 2026. Verify against primary sources before relying on this in a filing.