Dastou v. Holmes: a Massachusetts judge sanctions a lawyer for ChatGPT-fabricated jury instructions — no fine, but an MCLE course and no billing the client

The problem

In Dastou v. Holmes — a Middlesex Superior Court dispute between former romantic partners over possession of an 8-year-old pit bull named Kawi and responsibility for the dog’s veterinary bills — defendant’s counsel Samantha Kemp prepared for trial by drafting motions in limine and proposed jury instructions with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. According to the court, it was the first time she used generative AI to prepare pleadings, and she later admitted she did not fully understand how the technology worked.

What was built

No system was built or deployed. This is a court-origin AI-governance record — Massachusetts’s second reported attorney sanction for AI-fabricated legal authority, after Smith v. Farwell (Feb. 2024). Kemp used ChatGPT to draft and format court filings; she did not verify the output before filing it.

The outcome

The court found the filings “contained citations to nonexistent cases, a quotation attributed to a real case that was not contained in the real case, misstatements as to the holding of real cases, and a proposed jury instruction that introduced what sounded like a legitimate legal concept, but was actually fictitious.” On June 25, 2025, Justice Keren E. Goldenberg imposed a non-monetary sanction: she ordered Kemp to complete an MCLE program on drafting civil jury instructions and barred her from billing her client for the time spent preparing the defective materials and arguing the affected motions. The court warned the bar that “overreliance on AI risks deskilling legal practitioners” and that a lawyer “may not blame errors in their work product on the technology.” (The only dollar figure in the case — $1,950 — is the underlying breach-of-contract damages award, not a sanction.)

Path to green

A human must confirm docket posture on Dastou v. Holmes, No. 2381CV02212 (Middlesex Superior Court): whether Kemp completed the ordered MCLE program, whether any Board of Bar Overseers discipline followed, and whether the June 25, 2025 order was appealed, reconsidered, or vacated. No client call is needed to establish the record; the figures are court-adjudicated and quoted verbatim.