Barber v. Morawa: Michigan's first published appellate opinion sanctioning a lawyer for AI-fabricated citations

The problem

A lawyer challenging the denial of a new-trial motion in a medical-malpractice case built that challenge on citations that were not real. As the Michigan Court of Appeals put it, “in presenting that challenge, plaintiff’s counsel created a separate problem by repeatedly relying on fabricated and unsupported legal authority.” Counsel cited nonexistent cases and invoked real cases for propositions they did not support — in a trial-court motion for a protective order, again in a motion for a new trial or evidentiary hearing, and a third time in the brief on appeal — “even after defendant identified the defects.”

What was built

This is a court adjudication, not a technology deployment — the “build” is a published appellate opinion resolving how Michigan courts should treat AI-fabricated legal authority. Confronting a question no Michigan appellate court had answered in a published decision, the panel “join[ed] these other jurisdictions and h[e]ld that counsel’s submission of fabricated and unsupported authority violated the duty of reasonable inquiry required by MCR 1.109(E)(5).”

The AI link was on the record. When opposing counsel flagged the fabrications, counsel filed a “Notice of Correction” in which he “accepted ‘full responsibility’ for the citation errors and attributed them to ‘over-reliance on artificial intelligence research tools’ that generated ‘plausible but fabricated case citations—a known limitation of such tools.’” But the correction did not cure the problem: it misattributed quotations to cases that did not contain them, and “At oral argument, counsel acknowledged that he used artificial intelligence to prepare the Notice of Correction” — AI used to fix AI’s errors, reproducing them.

The outcome

The court affirmed the trial court’s denial of the new-trial motion on the merits, but sanctioned counsel for the briefing. Because sanctions under MCR 1.109(E)(6) are mandatory once a violation is found, the panel remanded for the trial court to determine actual damages and reasonable attorney fees at an evidentiary hearing, and held: “After determining the extent of the damages, the sanction is to be paid by plaintiff’s counsel personally.” The panel also directed “the Clerk of this Court to forward this opinion to the Attorney Grievance Commission for possible investigation.”

Two scope notes matter for anyone citing this. First, the opinion sets no dollar amount — it remands for the trial court to fix the figure; the out-of-state sums the panel catalogues (Whiting’s $15,000, Fletcher’s $2,500, Mata’s $5,000, and others) are comparative guidance, not this sanction. Second, the AI product is unnamed in the opinion, and so is the lawyer: the opinion says “plaintiff’s counsel.” The Detroit Free Press (Paul Egan, June 20, 2026) reports that “The Michigan Court of Appeals has ordered financial sanctions against an attorney and referred him to the Attorney Grievance Commission for using artificial intelligence to cite non-existent cases,” and that court records identify the attorney as Ronnie Cromer Jr. of Southfield.

Why it matters: the panel expressly noted that “No published Michigan decision addresses the appropriate sanction under MCR 7.216(C)(1) or MCR 1.109(E)(6) for an attorney’s submission of fabricated or unsupported legal authority resulting from the misuse of generative artificial intelligence.” Barber v. Morawa is therefore the first published Michigan appellate precedent on the question.

Path to green

No client-confirmation call applies: this is a court-adjudicated public record, so verification is documentary. The primary is the official Michigan Courts opinion PDF, byte-tied to CourtListener’s published sha1 09b057e5816c515e03101291b49b7d747fc7a34e (sha1-b32 BGYFPZMBNRIV4AYQCKI3JG35OR74PI2O); every quote binds under quotecheck against the committed extraction. A human can confirm, on the Oakland Circuit / Court of Appeals docket (COA No. 374773; LC No. 2023-199637-NH), the sanction amount once the trial court sets it on remand, and that neither a rehearing nor Michigan Supreme Court review disturbs the sanction or the Grievance Commission referral. Corroboration is proposed two_independent — the Detroit Free Press (Paul Egan) and the Speaker Law Firm’s dedicated analysis both carry the AI-fabrication finding, the personal sanction, and the Grievance Commission referral firsthand.