United States v. Farris: a federal appeals court denies a lawyer his pay and removes him from the case over AI-fabricated quotations from Westlaw's CoCounsel

The problem

Steven N. Howe was appointed under the Criminal Justice Act to represent John C. Farris in a criminal-sentencing appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (source). On its initial review, the court began to suspect Howe’s briefs “were generated, at least in part, by artificial-intelligence software” (source). As the opinion puts it, “The first tell was the file name of the principal brief: ‘CoCounsel Skill Results.’ CoCounsel is the name of Westlaw’s internal artificial-intelligence platform” (source).

A substantive review then turned up three problematic citations: the briefs’ purported direct quotations did not appear in their cited sources, and they misrepresented the holdings of two real Sixth Circuit decisions, United States v. Washington, 715 F.3d 975 (6th Cir. 2013), and United States v. Anthony, 280 F.3d 694 (6th Cir. 2002) (source).

What happened

This is not a technology deployment; it is an AI-governance outcome. After a February 23, 2026 show-cause order, the court recorded that “by his own admission, Howe used artificial intelligence to draft the briefs in this case and then filed them without properly verifying the cited legal authorities” (source).

Howe explained that he had directed an unnamed staff member to upload district court documents to Westlaw’s CoCounsel program to create a first draft of the principal brief, that his office had acquired CoCounsel only in August 2025, and that he had never been disciplined over his 40-year career (source).

The court credited that response, “We appreciate Howe’s timely response to the Court’s show-cause order as well as his candor in acknowledging his improper use of artificial intelligence,” but held that the distinction between real cases with fabricated quotes and outright invented cases makes no difference: “That Howe’s briefs cited real legal authorities—as opposed to ‘hallucinations’ featuring fictitious cases—does not absolve him” (source).

The outcome

On April 3, 2026, in a per curiam opinion recommended for publication (Clay, Gibbons, and Hermandorfer, Circuit Judges), the court concluded that Howe “committed inexcusable transgressions during the appellate phase of this case” and imposed a set of non-monetary sanctions (source).

First, Howe shall not be compensated under the Criminal Justice Act for his time spent on this appeal: the sanction is the denial of public funds, not a fine (source). Second, the clerk was directed to forward the opinion to the Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit to consider disciplinary proceedings under Local Rule 46, and to serve it on the Eastern District of Kentucky and the Disciplinary Clerk for the Kentucky Bar Association (source). Third, by a separate order the same day, the court stated “we remove Howe from further representation of Farris,” locked the briefs he had filed, and reset the briefing schedule (source).

There is no dollar fine in this case: a deliberate contrast with the Rule 11 monetary sanctions that dominate this line of decisions (source).

Why it matters

Farris is the case that severs the AI-sanctions line from the fabricated-case fact pattern. Every earlier decision in this cluster punished citations to authorities that did not exist; here the cases were real and only the quotations were invented, and the court said plainly that the difference does not absolve counsel (source). The duty is to verify what a source actually says, not merely that it exists (source).

It is also the case where the sanction is structural rather than financial: strip the pay, remove the lawyer, protect the defendant with fresh briefing. For any organisation deploying a drafting assistant, the operational lesson is that verification cannot be delegated downstream to the person who ran the tool (source).

How this was verified

Method: Independent-origin appellate document. The primary source is the published Sixth Circuit opinion (File Name 26a0105p.06), retrieved directly from the court’s official opinions host. Every load-bearing fact, the CoCounsel file-name tell, the admission of AI use, the denial of CJA compensation, the Local Rule 46 and Kentucky Bar referrals, and the separate removal order, was read against that primary document and then independently corroborated in law-firm and legal-press analyses published by parties with no stake in the outcome (Reed Smith, Norton Rose Fulbright, Speaker Law).

Conflicts shown, not merged: Westlaw’s CoCounsel is named as the tool identified from the brief’s file name and by Howe’s own admission. The court did not run a forensic determination pinning the fabrications to CoCounsel, and this record asserts no such finding.

No monetary figure is claimed, because the court imposed none.

Verification date: 2026-08-14. No outreach was made to any party; TIN verifies against the public record only.

Related case files

• Whiting v. City of Athens: the Sixth Circuit’s monetary counterpart, $15,000 punitive per attorney.
• Barber v. Morawa: first published Michigan appellate decision in the same line.
• LNU v. Blanche: where the Ninth Circuit escalated to suspension.
• Johnson v. Dunn: disqualification as the non-monetary sanction.

Sources

1. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, United States v. Farris, No. 25-5623, per curiam opinion recommended for publication (File Name 26a0105p.06), April 3, 2026. https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/26a0105p-06.pdf (Tier 1, primary court document)
2. Reed Smith LLP, “AI, Legal Ethics, and the Duty of Verification: Lessons from United States v. Farris.” https://www.reedsmith.com/our-insights/blogs/viewpoints/102mp0w/ai-legal-ethics-and-the-duty-of-verification-lessons-from-united-states-v-far/ (Tier 2, independent legal analysis)
3. Norton Rose Fulbright, “AI in litigation: Update on Gen AI sanctions in 2026.” https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en-us/knowledge/publications/792d8bf3/ai-in-litigation-update-on-gen-ai-sanctions-in-2026 (Tier 2, independent legal analysis)
4. Speaker Law Firm, “Sixth Circuit Sanctions Attorney For Unverified AI-Generated Briefs.” https://www.speakerlaw.com/blog/sixth-circuit-sanctions-attorney-for-unverified-ai-generated-briefs (Tier 2, independent legal analysis)
5. CaseMine, “United States v. John C. Farris: Sixth Circuit Sanctions for Unverified AI-Generated Appellate Briefing.” https://www.casemine.com/commentary/us/united-states-v.-john-c.-farris:-sixth-circuit-sanctions-for-unverified-ai-generated-appellate-briefing-and-reaffirms-nondelegable-duty-of-candor-and-citation-verification/view (Tier 3, aggregator commentary)