Lnu v. Blanche

── Lnu v. Blanche ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Date: June 03, 2026 Category: General FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MALKEET LNU; SUNITA RANI No. 24-4790 LNU; JAIVIN LOHAN, Agency Nos. A241-692-761 Petitioners, A241-692-762 A241-692-763 v. TODD BLANCHE, Acting Attorney ORDER General, Respondent, MIKE SINGH SETHI; WILLIAM ROUNDS, Interested Parties. Filed June 3, 2026 Before: Richard A. Paez, Carlos T. Bea, and Danielle J. Forrest, Circuit Judges. 2 LNU V. BLANCHE SUMMARY * Attorney Discipline/Use of Artificial Intelligence The panel issued an order imposing sanctions against two attorneys due to their filing of briefs containing multiple nonexistent cases, misattributed quotations, and gross misrepresentations of real cases, and due to their lack of candor in revealing that these fabrications and inaccuracies were the result of hallucinations by generative AI. The panel explained that it was not imposing sanctions for the simple fact that the attorneys or their subordinates used generative AI. That is, the rules are not violated at the point of research and drafting, but at the point of signing and filing. If an attorney files a brief with cases or quotations that do not exist, or completely misrepresents what a real authority stands for, it generally does not matter if he pulled the hallucination or misrepresentation from the output of an artificial intelligence tool or from his own natural intelligence. However legal papers are prepared, and however legal technology develops, the court’s procedural and ethical rules apply with equal force. Just as faithful adherence to those rules would prevent the submission of generative AI hallucinations, such adherence would also prevent the submission of similar human-generated errors. Here, it was the attorneys’ signing and filing of briefs containing hallucinated fabrications and inaccuracies that violated procedural and ethical rules. * This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.  LNU V. BLANCHE 3 The misconduct in this case did not end with the initial filing of the briefs. At every subsequent step—including a Motion to Correct, oral argument, the Response to the panel’s Order to Show Cause, and more recent filings in other cases—the attorneys knowingly or recklessly made false statements to this Court. The attorneys each violated their duty of candor when they claimed that the nonexistent cases in the opening brief were the result of typographical or copy-paste errors. In circumstances such as these, the duty of candor requires a transparent disclosure of the source of the errors. The panel stressed that when an attorney learns of any error in a filing—including generative AI hallucinations—he should immediately alert the court and opposing counsel of the error and disclose its source. If, in the Motion to Correct, the attorneys had disclosed that AI was used in the opening brief against firm policy and apologized for failing to check the brief, lesser sanctions may have been warranted. But that is not what they did. The gravity of discipline imposed, including monetary sanctions and the temporary suspension of practice before this court for six months, was owed to this repeated failure of candor. 4 LNU V. BLANCHE COUNSEL Mike Singh Sethi (argued), Sethi Law Group, Orange, California; William Rounds, Bill Rounds Attorney at Law PC, Orange, California; for Petitioners. Linda Y. Cheng (argued), Senior Trial Attorney; Timothy B. Stanton, Attorney; Anthony P. Nicastro, Assistant Director; Office of