In his Friday order, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta granted attorney Glenn Ellis' motion to withdraw from representing the estate of former Athena Construction Group Inc. executive William Smith in a qui tam False Claims Act suit against the company, which is a government contractor.
Judge Mehta also ordered Athena to provide an invoice for fees and costs associated with the motion that contained faulty citations, which Ellis will be responsible for reimbursing.
Sanctions were necessary, Judge Mehta found, because Ellis had acted recklessly and shown "singularly egregious" conduct. Ellis was "reckless" in that he did not verify the citations, according to the judge, and "singularly egregious" in that "every one of the nine cases cited in the brief was erroneous in some respect."
Judge Mehta did not sanction Ellis' co-counsel from Baron & Budd PC, who previously said they were not aware of the attorney's use of AI but admitted they had not independently verified his citations, which appeared in a motion opposing Athena's request for a deadline extension.
"This court appreciates the power of AI tools and their potential to transform how lawyers research and write legal briefs," Judge Mehta wrote. "The prospects are tantalizing."
"But AI technologies are not a better mouse trap that allows lawyers to ignore what we were all taught as first-years in law school: check your legal citations for accuracy," Judge Mehta said. "If anything, AI technologies require lawyers — and judges, too — to be even more vigilant in ensuring the accuracy of legal briefs."
Smith, represented by Ellis, first filed suit against Athena in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in January 2017. Seeking to represent the government, Smith accused Athena of violating the FCA by fraudulently obtaining Small Business Administration certifications to collect millions of dollars in undeserved government contracts.
Baron & Budd attorneys were added in May 2018, and the suit was transferred to Washington, D.C., in August of that year.
Smith died in October 2024, and his estate, represented by Vickie Smith, was substituted as plaintiff in the matter, which was later set to go to trial in October 2025.
In July of this year, Athena asked the court to bump the anticipated trial to 2026, in light of a key witness's scheduling conflicts. According to Athena, the company's president had been compelled to step in as a site superintendent on a military civil engineering contract after the previous superintendent suffered a major medical issue.
The Smith estate sought to fight the continuance, arguing in an opposition that the company had not shown the conflict was unavoidable.
The opposition, signed by Baron & Budd attorney Catherine H. Dorsey, was found to have contained numerous citation errors.
In a reply, Athena pointed to the "fabricated, nonexistent case law, as well as material misrepresentations of existing case law, in addition to hyperbolic accusations of Athena seeking to delay trial 'indefinitely.'" The opposition was reportedly riddled with errors, including one fully fabricated citation, three nonexistent quotations and two misinterpretations of case law, Athena said.
Judge Mehta later determined all nine of the citations included in the opposition "raise serious ethical concerns" and asked the four plaintiffs' attorneys to describe the roles they played in its creation in an order to show cause.
That was when Dorsey filed to withdraw the motion and explained that it had been researched and drafted by Ellis.
"Although undersigned counsel reviewed the opposition brief prior to filing it, undersigned counsel had no reason to know or suspect that the case citations were inaccurate or false," Dorsey said in a July brief, telling the judge she was "still waiting" on an explanation from Ellis at the time Judge Mehta filed the show cause order.
"Mr. Ellis informed undersigned counsel that he had used two tools (Grammarly and Lexis' cite-checking tool), which resulted in the erroneous case citations, but that he had not noticed the errors when performing a final review of the brief," Dorsey told Judge Mehta at the time, explaining that she filed the brief "on his behalf" because Ellis was traveling that day.
In his own response on the following day, Ellis likewise said he was "wholly responsible for researching and preparing the opposition brief." Ellis said he suspected the errors had been inserted by AI-powered tools Grammarly and ProWritingAid, and not caught by Lexis+ AI. Among issues Ellis identified were what appeared to be quotation marks inserted around passages he intended to be paraphrases.
Ellis chalked up the allegation of misinterpreted precedent to his own human error.
The attorney notified the court at the time that he had already begun the process of self-reporting the incident to the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board and had already filed a motion to withdraw.
In his order Friday, Judge Mehta noted Ellis' self-report to the Pennsylvania Bar and directed the lawyer to supplement the disciplinary record with the sanctions order, also ordering Ellis to notify the court of the outcome of any disciplinary proceeding.
When reached for comment, Milt Johns, counsel for Athena called Judge Mehta's order "measured and appropriate."
Ellis and counsel for the Smith estate did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Vickie Smith, as representative of the estate of William Smith, is represented by Catherine Hancock Dorsey, W. Scott Simmer and Andrew M. Miller of Baron & Budd PC.
Athena Construction Group Inc. is represented by Milton C. Johns and Jill F. Helwig of Executive Law Partners PLLC.
The case is Smith v. Athena Construction Group Inc., case number 1:18-cv-02080, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
--Editing by Drashti Mehta.
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