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, “plaintiff’s counsel created a separate problem by repeatedly relying on fabricated and unsupported legal authority” (source). 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, across three separate filings and even after defendant identified the defects (source).

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 held: “We join these other jurisdictions and hold that counsel’s submission of fabricated and unsupported authority violated the duty of reasonable inquiry required by MCR 1.109(E)(5)” (source).

The AI link was on the record. When opposing counsel flagged the fabrications, counsel filed a “Notice of Correction” attributing the errors to “over-reliance on artificial intelligence research tools” that generated “plausible but fabricated case citations—a known limitation of such tools” (source). The correction did not cure the problem: it pinned quotations on real cases that never contained them, and “At oral argument, counsel acknowledged that he used artificial intelligence to prepare the Notice of Correction” (source) — AI used to fix AI’s errors, reproducing them (source).

The outcome

The sanction: personal, and unquantified in this opinion. The court affirmed the denial of the new-trial motion on the merits but sanctioned counsel for the briefing, holding: “After determining the extent of the damages, the sanction is to be paid by plaintiff’s counsel personally” (source). Because sanctions under MCR 1.109(E)(6) are mandatory once a violation is found, the panel remanded for the trial court to fix actual damages and reasonable attorney fees at an evidentiary hearing (source).

The referral: 1 disciplinary referral to the Attorney Grievance Commission. The panel directed: “We do not retain jurisdiction, but we direct the Clerk of this Court to forward this opinion to the Attorney Grievance Commission for possible investigation” (source).

The precedent: Michigan’s first published appellate ruling on the question. 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” (source).

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, and the out-of-state sums the panel catalogues as comparative guidance (Whiting’s $15,000, Fletcher’s $2,500, Mata’s $5,000, Couvrette’s $15,500) are not this sanction. Second, the AI product is unnamed in the opinion, and so is the lawyer: the opinion says “plaintiff’s counsel.” Independent legal press reporting from court records identifies the attorney as Ronnie Cromer Jr. of Southfield (source).

How this was verified

This case rests on a court-adjudicated primary record, not on any account from the parties. The primary is the official Michigan Courts opinion PDF for COA No. 374773, re-fetched on 2026-08-12 and carrying embedded document metadata reading “COA 374773 JOYCE BARBER V LAWRENCE J MORAWA MD Opinion - Authored - Published 6/17/2026.” It is byte-tied to CourtListener’s published sha1 09b057e5816c515e03101291b49b7d747fc7a34e for the same opinion. Because first-party court URLs rot, every quote above was additionally re-checked word for word on 2026-08-12 against FindLaw’s independent full-text reprint, so no load-bearing sentence here depends on a single host staying reachable. Three independent outlets — the Speaker Law Firm’s dedicated analysis, Michigan Lawyers Weekly and Law360 Pulse — each carry the AI-fabrication finding, the personal sanction and the Grievance Commission referral firsthand, and the Michigan Courts IMPACT bulletin for June 11–19, 2026 is the court’s own summary of the decision.

The honest limits. The opinion fixes no dollar figure, so this file asserts none: the amount will be set by the Oakland Circuit Court on remand (COA No. 374773; LC No. 2023-199637-NH), and that docket, plus the absence of any rehearing or Michigan Supreme Court order disturbing the sanction, is what a reader should check for the final number. The AI product is never identified in the record and is not guessed at here. Whether the Attorney Grievance Commission opened an investigation is not public and is not claimed.

Related case files

The panel in Barber built its holding on out-of-state precedent that TIN has already documented. Whiting v. City of Athens is the Sixth Circuit $15,000-per-attorney sanction the opinion catalogues as comparative guidance, and Couvrette v. Wisnovsky is the per-citation, per-quotation formula it cites from Oregon. For the same “first published appellate ruling in this state” moment elsewhere, see Noland v. Land of the Free, California’s first published opinion on AI-fabricated citations. Prososki v. Regan is the closest structural match to Barber: a state supreme court pairing an appellate consequence with a disciplinary referral rather than a headline fine.

Sources

Cited in this case file. Tier 1 = the court’s own published opinion; Tier 2 = independent press and full-text legal databases; Tier 3 = paywalled report. Each quotation was checked against the live source on 2026-08-12.

1. Michigan Court of Appeals, Joyce Barber v. Lawrence J. Morawa, MD, No. 374773, FOR PUBLICATION, decided 2026-06-17 (Tier 1, official opinion PDF; byte-tied to CourtListener sha1 09b057e5816c515e03101291b49b7d747fc7a34e). https://www.courts.michigan.gov/49d9f9/siteassets/case-documents/uploads/opinions/final/coa/20260617_c374773_42_374773.opn.pdf
2. FindLaw Caselaw, Barber v. Ascension Providence Hospital (Mich. Ct. App. 2026), full-text reprint of No. 374773 (Tier 2, independent full-text database; every quote in this file binds against it). https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/mi-court-of-appeals/137046.html
3. Speaker Law Firm, “Court of Appeals Sanctions Attorney for AI-Generated Fake Citations and Vexatious Appeal,” 2026-06-18 (Tier 2, independent legal analysis; confirms the personal sanction, the remand and the Grievance Commission referral). https://www.speakerlaw.com/blog/court-of-appeals-sanctions-attorney-for-ai-generated-fake-citations-and-vexatious-appeal
4. Michigan Lawyers Weekly, “Repeated use of AI, false authority results in sanctions,” 2026 (Tier 2, independent legal press; names the attorney from court records). https://www.michigantoplawyers.com/repeated-use-of-ai-false-authority-results-in-sanctions/
5. Michigan Courts, IMPACT, June 11–19, 2026 (Tier 2, the court system’s own published case summary). https://www.courts.michigan.gov/49f4b3/siteassets/publications/impact/written/impact.pdf
6. Law360 Pulse, “Mich. Panel Sanctions Atty Over AI-Hallucinated Cases,” 2026 (Tier 3, independent but paywalled; headline-level corroboration). https://www.law360.com/pulse/small-law/articles/2491499