Legal ServicesHallucinationCopilotMedium

A Pennsylvania federal court suspended an attorney six months for AI-hallucinated citations

In June 2026, U.S. District Chief Judge Matthew Brann of the Middle District of Pennsylvania sanctioned attorney Nicholas W. Mattiacci Sr. for filing briefs with AI-generated hallucinated citations, ordering a $1,500 penalty and suspending him from practice in the district for six months beginning June 22. The judge rejected the attorney's attempt to blame research tools and label the errors inadvertent, and noted it was not his first disregard for the court's rules.

N.W. Mattiacci Law (Middle District of Pennsylvania) · Incident Jun 22, 2026 · Indexed Jul 10, 2026 · 1 source

Records by entity: N W Mattiacci Law

The judge said the attorney could not escape his duties by pointing to the duties of others or by ascribing a label to his errors.

Key facts

What
In June 2026, U.S.
Incident date
Jun 22, 2026
Who
N.W. Mattiacci Law (Middle District of Pennsylvania)
Failure mode
Hallucination
AI surface
Copilot
Severity
Medium

What happened

Chief Judge Matthew Brann determined that attorney Nicholas W. Mattiacci Sr. violated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 by submitting briefs with fabricated and inaccurate case citations. In a May ruling on the erroneous citations, Brann rejected the attorney's attempt to sidestep responsibility by blaming research tools and calling the errors inadvertent and minor, and faulted his effort to deflect onto opposing counsel. Brann ordered a $1,500 penalty and suspended Mattiacci from practicing in the Middle District of Pennsylvania for six months starting June 22, 2026, noting it was not his first instance of disregarding the rules governing federal practice.

What broke inside the model

Failure path · mode profile · Hallucination
  1. 01 · TriggerA user asks for a fact, a citation, or a figure.
  2. 02 · Model stepThe model writes a fluent, confident answer.
  3. 03 · Control gapNothing ties the claim back to a real source.
  4. 04 · FailureA fabricated fact ships as if it were verified.
  5. 05 · ConsequenceThe false claim reaches a customer, a court, or the public.

Confidence holds, and even spikes, as the claim detaches from any source.

The tool generated citations that did not exist or misstated real authority, and they entered court filings without verification. What elevated the consequence from a fine to a suspension was the response after the fact: attributing hallucinations to the software and minimizing them, rather than the disclosure and correction courts have signaled they expect when AI errors surface.

What it cost

Public visibilityMedium
Regulatory exposureActive
Customer impactFew customers
Financial impactDisclosed
Time to disclosureMonths

Sources

  1. PressFed. Court Suspends Pa. Attorney for AI-Hallucinated Citationslaw.com

Cite this entry

Permalinkhttps://failureindex.ai/failures/mattiacci-pennsylvania-attorney-suspended-ai-hallucinations
CitationAI Failure Index. "A Pennsylvania federal court suspended an attorney six months for AI-hallucinated citations" (FI-0714). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/mattiacci-pennsylvania-attorney-suspended-ai-hallucinations (indexed Jul 10, 2026).
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Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0714. Full dataset at /data.

Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward

How Realm would have caught this

Controls for this failure mode
  • Prism
  • OmniGuard
  • AI Detection & Response (AIDR)

Realm catches fabricated citations at generation time, before they reach a filing, and preserves a record of what the model produced. That record supports the prompt disclosure and correction that distinguishes a caught error from a sanctionable one.

Explore Realm Labs

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