On September 8 the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District denied a writ petition and ordered the attorney who filed it to pay $1,750, after she admitted that two cases in her brief came from generative artificial intelligence and did not exist. The court was careful to say it was not punishing her for using the technology. The rule it applied has been on the books for decades, and it reaches self-represented parties as surely as it reaches lawyers.
The essentials
Decided September 8, 2026. State of Missouri ex rel. Steven Schnell v. Honorable Rebecca Richardson, No. ED114731 (Mo. App. E.D., Writ Division Four). Opinion by Presiding Judge John P. Torbitzky, with Judge Lisa P. Page and Judge Michael S. Wright concurring.
The writ petition was denied. Counsel was ordered to pay $1,750 in attorney’s fees under Rule 55.03(c). The court expressly declined to decide whether any rule of professional conduct was violated, noting that discipline rests solely with the Supreme Court of Missouri.
A writ of mandamus is a narrow instrument. A party asks an appellate court to order a trial judge to do something the law requires. Most such petitions are denied without much said about them. This one produced a published opinion because of what the Eastern District found when it read the papers.
The underlying case involves a petition to terminate a father’s parental rights and allow a stepparent adoption. The relator asked that the matter be moved to St. Charles County, where other litigation about the same child was pending, on the theory that every case touching one family must be heard by the same judge. To support that proposition, his counsel cited two decisions. On the strength of those citations, the court ordered the opposing parties to file suggestions in opposition, which required them to hire counsel and respond.
When the court compared the filings, the citations did not hold up. The volume and page numbers led to unrelated cases. Cases bearing the names counsel had given did exist elsewhere in the reporters, but they did not stand for anything like the proposition claimed. The court issued a show cause order. Counsel answered that she had used generative artificial intelligence to find authority and had not verified the results before filing. The opinion describes her response as earnest and apologetic. It still imposed a sanction.
The rule the court applied
Missouri Supreme Court Rule 55.03 governs the signing of pleadings, motions and other papers. Subsection (a) requires that every filing be signed by an attorney of record or by the self-represented party. Subsection (b) then attaches a certification to that signature.
What a signature certifies under Rule 55.03(b)
That the filing is not presented for an improper purpose, such as harassment, delay, or needlessly increasing the cost of litigation.
That the legal contentions are warranted by existing law, or by a non-frivolous argument to extend, modify or reverse existing law.
That the factual contentions have evidentiary support, or are identified as likely to have support after further investigation.
That denials of factual contentions are warranted on the evidence. The certification is measured by what a reasonable inquiry would have turned up, not by what the signer subjectively believed.
The Eastern District found two violations. The first it called obvious: for a contention to be warranted by existing law, the law relied on has to exist. Counsel could not identify any case supporting her position, and the court’s own research found none. The second was the failure to make a reasonable inquiry before filing. Citing its 2024 decision in Kruse v. Karlen, the federal decision in Mata v. Avianca, and a 2026 article in the Journal of The Missouri Bar, the court held that the tendency of these systems to fabricate authority is well enough documented that no attorney or self-represented party can reasonably skip verification.
The court drew a line that is worth reading carefully
Much of the commentary about opinions like this treats them as warnings against the technology. The Eastern District said the opposite in plain terms. It described generative artificial intelligence as now commonplace in legal practice and, in many ways, profoundly beneficial, capable of reviewing voluminous discovery, summarizing long documents, and assisting with research and drafting in ways that save clients money. The sanction, it wrote, was incidental to the tool.
“In this respect, it is no different than if Conley signed her name to work prepared by someone else without verifying the accuracy of claims therein.”
Presiding Judge John P. Torbitzky, ED114731
That framing matters because it makes the holding portable. The duty is not a duty to avoid software. It is the ordinary duty that attaches whenever a person puts a signature under work product someone or something else produced. A lawyer who files an associate’s memorandum without reading it, a trustee who signs an inventory a bookkeeper assembled without checking it, and a business owner who signs a contract a model drafted are all in the same posture.
Where this sits in a short Missouri record
Missouri courts have addressed fabricated citations three times in roughly two and a half years, and the pattern is instructive.
February 13, 2024 · Kruse v. Karlen, 692 S.W.3d 43
The Eastern District dismissed a self-represented appeal in which only two of twenty-four citations were genuine. The appellant had paid an online consultant who claimed to be a licensed attorney and who used generative artificial intelligence to prepare the brief. The court awarded $10,000 in damages under Rule 84.19 for a frivolous appeal.
September 1, 2026 · Fortune v. CTA Certified Transmission, WD88370
The Western District dismissed an appeal arising from a small claims transmission dispute after finding that three cited cases were completely fictitious and were relied on eight times. The opinion did not identify where the citations came from and did not mention artificial intelligence. We wrote about that decision here.
September 8, 2026 · State ex rel. Schnell v. Richardson, ED114731
A licensed Missouri attorney admitted the source, the court imposed a monetary sanction under Rule 55.03 on its own initiative, and the fee award ran to the opposing parties who had been forced to respond.
The progression is from consumer harm, to an unexplained filing, to a candid admission by counsel and a measured fee shift. What stayed constant across all three is that the court reached the same place regardless of how the false citations were produced.
Some Missouri circuits already require disclosure
Beyond Rule 55.03, several Missouri circuits have adopted local rules on the subject. The Circuit Court of Clay County, the Seventh Judicial Circuit, adopted Local Rule 3.3 on July 25, 2024. It provides that any person who submits a pleading or filing prepared with a generative artificial intelligence tool, whether for the legal research referenced in the filing or for the drafting itself, must disclose that use to the court, identify the tool, and describe how it was used. The rule expressly reminds filers that Rule 55.03 continues to apply.
Note the phrase “any person.” Local rules of this kind are not aimed only at lawyers. Anyone who intends to file a paper in a Missouri circuit court should check that circuit’s local rules before doing so, because the requirements are not uniform across the state.
What this means outside a courtroom
Most people reading this will never sign an appellate brief. The reasoning still reaches ordinary transactions, because the same verification gap produces different consequences depending on the document.
A commercial lease, an operating agreement, a promissory note, a deed, a beneficiary designation, or a trust amendment generated by a language model can read fluently and still misstate the governing Missouri statute, omit a required formality, or import a rule from another state. Nobody issues a show cause order when that happens. The problem surfaces later, when a tenant refuses to leave, when a member claims a distribution the agreement never authorized, when a title examiner rejects a conveyance, or when a family learns at the courthouse that a signing did not satisfy Missouri law. The cost is measured in litigation and delay rather than in a fee award. Our business law, estate planning and litigation practices see the results of that gap regularly.
There is a second exposure worth naming. Under section 484.010, RSMo, the “law business” includes advising another person for valuable consideration about legal rights and drawing or assisting in drawing documents that affect those rights. Section 484.020, RSMo, makes engaging in that business without a license a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to one hundred dollars plus costs, and allows the client to recover treble the amount paid within two years. A person who uses a model to prepare legal documents for their own affairs is not implicated by those sections. A person who begins preparing them for others, for a fee, should read them closely.
A practical standard, borrowed from the opinion
Treat model output the way you would treat a draft handed to you by an assistant you have never worked with. Useful, plausible, and unverified.
Check every citation, statute number and figure against the primary source. In Missouri that means the codified section on revisor.mo.gov and the opinion itself on courts.mo.gov, not a summary.
Confirm that the authority says what it is claimed to say. The Schnell filings failed on that point even where a case with the right name existed.
Before filing anything in a Missouri circuit court, read that circuit’s local rules on disclosure. Before signing anything that transfers property, money or authority, have a lawyer review it.
The Eastern District also listed the professional conduct rules that careless use can implicate, among them Rule 4-1.1 on competence, which requires lawyers to keep up with the benefits and risks of relevant technology, Rule 4-3.1 on meritorious claims, Rule 4-3.3 on candor toward the tribunal, Rule 4-5.4 on independent professional judgment, and Rule 4-8.4 on misconduct. It made no finding on any of them and encouraged Missouri attorneys to read the Office of Legal Ethics Counsel’s Informal Opinion 2024-11. Clients are entitled to ask their own counsel how these tools are used in their matter, and a straightforward answer should be available.
Helpful resources
The coverage below is drawn from several vantage points and labeled by ownership, so you can weigh each account and reach your own conclusion.
Opinion in State ex rel. Schnell v. Richardson, ED114731 · Missouri Judiciary, official state court record. The primary source for everything described above.
Missouri Supreme Court Rule 55.03 · Missouri Judiciary, official text of the signing and sanctions rule.
Section 484.020, RSMo · Missouri Revisor of Statutes, the official codified text maintained by the State of Missouri.
Clay County Local Court Rules, Rule 3.3 · Seventh Judicial Circuit of Missouri, official local rules of that court.
Kruse v. Karlen, 692 S.W.3d 43 (Mo. App. E.D. 2024) · FindLaw, a commercial legal database owned by Thomson Reuters. Full text of the earlier decision.
Contemporaneous report on Kruse v. Karlen · Missouri Independent, a nonprofit newsroom funded by donors and part of the States Newsroom network. Not a government source.
Artificial Intelligence and the Legal Profession · Journal of The Missouri Bar, published by the state’s unified bar association. The article the Eastern District cited.
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This article is provided for educational purposes only and is not legal or tax advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Haake Law Group PC or Derek R. Haake. Court rules, statutes and local rules change, and their application depends on the specific facts of a matter. Verify any point that affects you against the current primary source and consult a licensed attorney before acting.