Possible $5K Sanctions for Repeated Mis-Citation in Coomer v. Lindell / My Pillow Election-Related Libel Suit
"It appears that the Court’s prior admonitions and sanctions have had little, if any, remedial impact."
I blogged last year about the $6K sanctions imposed earlier in this case for AI hallucinations, as well as about the earlier order identifying the hallucinations and the lawyer's response; here's a follow-up, from today's Order on Post-Trial Motions by Judge Nina Wang (D. Colo.):
Before concluding, the Court must address Frankspeech's brief in response to Plaintiff's Motion to Amend Final Judgment. Troublingly, given the background of this case, Frankspeech's response brief misattributes a district court case to the Tenth Circuit. On the first page of its brief, Frankspeech states that "[t]he 10th Circuit recognized in Capital Solutions, LLC v. Konica Minolta Business Solutions USA, Inc., 695 F.Supp.2d 1149, 1154-56 (10th Cir. 2010), that the jury's determination on this issue is entitled to finality." As the Federal Supplement reporter citation indicates, however, Capital Solutions is not a Tenth Circuit decision. See Cap. Sols., LLC v. Konica Minolta Bus. Sols. U.S.A., Inc., 695 F. Supp. 2d 1149 (D. Kan. 2010). Nor was that decision appealed to the Tenth Circuit. A reasonable review by counsel should have alerted them of the error; it is well-understood to any lawyer that the Federal Supplement is the reporter for district, not circuit, court decisions.
{Although the Court is primarily concerned with counsel's erroneous citation, this description of Capital Solutions's holding is also misleading. Capital Solutions dealt with a Kansas statute that "prescribes a procedure by which the jury first determines whether punitive damages should be allowed, and then the court determines the amount of such damages in a separate proceeding." Before trial, the court held that the Seventh Amendment's "trial by jury" clause—not the Reexamination Clause—entitled a plaintiff "to have the entirety of its claim for punitive damages, including the determination of the amount, decided by the jury." In other words, Capital Solutions dealt with whether a jury should decide the amount of punitive damages in the first instance, as opposed to ruling that an award of punitive damages is "entitled to finality" in the post-trial context.}
The Court has previously sanctioned defense counsel under Rule 11 for, among other things, this exact type of error. At that time, defense counsel both admitted that their previous citation errors were produced by artificial intelligence but then claimed that the errors resulted from a one-off mistaken filing of the wrong draft, not a failure to properly review their citations for accuracy..
The Court cannot ignore this reoccurring conduct simply because the trial is over. Regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence was used or not, the Tenth Circuit has been clear that an attorney has a "fundamental duty" to the Court to confirm that all legal authorities in submissions to the Court are accurately cited, reflect accurate quotations, and stand for the propositions for which they are cited. And the Circuit has similarly been clear that failing to do so warrants sanctions, even for pro se litigants who may typically receive more lenience than an attorney.
Here, it is inexplicable how these errors—the misrepresentation to the Court that this principle came from binding Tenth Circuit authority and the mis-citation of the case—occurred yet again after the Court's prior Order to Show Cause laying out the applicable principles under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In that prior order, the Court concluded that sanctioning each defense attorney $3,000 was "the least severe sanction adequate to deter and punish defense counsel in this instance." It appears that the Court's prior admonitions and sanctions have had little, if any, remedial impact.
Accordingly, no later than April 8, 2026, Defendants are ORDERED to SHOW CAUSE why Frankspeech, Christopher I. Kachouroff, and Jennifer DeMaster should not be sanctioned, jointly and severally, a graduated amount of $5,000 for their continued failure to check their citations as required by Rule 11 before submission to the Court, and why Mr. Kachouroff should not be referred to the State Bar of Virginia and Ms. DeMaster to the State Bar of Wisconsin for disciplinary proceedings for violations of applicable Rules of Professional Conduct as set forth in the Court's original Order to Show Cause.
As I noted in an earlier post, one might say Mr. Kachouroff was caught with his pants down, though I think the current problem is worse than the earlier one: