Kruglyak v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. (2025)

Case details
Country
United States
Jurisdiction
Federal
Decided
2025
Majority
Pamela Meade Sargent (J.) (unanimous Court)
© 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.Kruglyak v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.United States District Court, W.D. Virginia, Abingdon Division. | March 25, 2025 | --- F.Supp.3d ---- |2025 WL 900621Document Detailsstandard Citation:Kruglyak v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., No. 1:22CV00024, 2025 WL900621 (W.D. Va. Mar. 25, 2025)All Citations:--- F.Supp.3d ----, 2025 WL 900621Search DetailsJurisdiction:VirginiaDelivery DetailsDate:May 18, 2025 at 8:42 AMDelivered By: Client ID:NOCLIENTIDOutlineAttorneys and LawFirms (p.1)MEMORANDUMORDER (p.1)All Citations (p.4)
Kruglyak v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., --- F.Supp.3d ---- (2025) © 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.12025 WL 900621Only the Westlaw citation is currently available.United States District Court, W.D. Virginia,Abingdon Division.Vladimir KRUGLYAK, Plaintiff,v.HOME DEPOT U.S.A., INC., Defendant.Civil Action No.: 1:22cv00024|Signed March 25, 2025Attorneys and Law FirmsVladimir Kruglyak, Bristol, TN, Pro Se.Kevin Brian Cornish, High Swartz LLP, Norristown,PA, for Defendant.MEMORANDUM ORDERPamela Meade Sargent, United States MagistrateJudge*1 On December 4, 2024, the court, on its owninitiative, pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil ProcedureRule 11(c)(3), its contempt power and its inherentauthority to protect the integrity of its proceedings andrulings, ordered the plaintiff to show cause why heshould not be sanctioned for violating Federal Rulesof Civil Procedure Rule 11(b) and/or held in contemptfor citing fictitious cases in his Plaintiff's Reply ToDefendant's Response In Opposition To Motion ToCompel, (Docket Item No. 123). The court furtherordered the plaintiff to show cause why he should notbe sanctioned for violating Rule 11(b) and/or held incontempt for misrepresenting the holding of variouscases he cited in the same pleading. The plaintiff timelyresponded to the court's Order. (Docket Item No. 127)(“Response”). Although given the opportunity to do so,the defendant did not respond to the Order.Rule 11(b)(1) states that “[b]y presenting to the court apleading, written motion, or other paper ... an attorneyor unrepresented party certifies to the best of theperson's knowledge, information, and belief, formedafter an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances[that] ... it is not being presented for any improperpurpose, such as to harass[.]” Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b)(1). The basic requirement of Rule 11 is “that anunrepresented party or a represented party's attorneyconduct a prefiling investigation of law and fact whichis objectively reasonable under the circumstances.”Harmon v. O'Keefe, 149 F.R.D. 114, 116 (E.D. Va.1993) (citing Brubaker v. City of Richmond, 943 F.2d1363, 1373 (4th Cir. 1991)); see Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b).It is well-settled that “[p]ro se litigants are entitledto consideration of their non-lawyer status.” Weathersv. Ziko, 113 F. Supp. 3d 830, 833 (M.D. N.C. 2015).Furthermore, any sanction “must be limited to whatsuffices to deter” similar litigation misconduct by theoffending party and “others similarly situated.” Fed. R.Civ. P. 11(c)(4); see In re Kunstler, 914 F.2d 505, 522(4th Cir. 1990) (“[T]he primary, or ‘first’ purpose ofRule 11 is to deter future litigation abuse.”). The courtmust impose “the least extreme sanction reasonablycalculated to achieve the appropriate punitive anddeterrent purposes” of Rule 11. Byrd v. Hopson, 108F. App'x 749, 754-56 (4th Cir. 2004) (quoting Byrnev. Nezhat, 261 F.3d 1075, 1132 n.112 (11th Cir.2001)). The court enjoys broad discretion both indetermining whether a filing violated Rule 11(b) andin crafting any appropriate sanction. See Cooter &Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 405, 110 S.Ct.2447, 110 L.Ed.2d 359 (1990). Under Rule 11, courtsmay award sanctions of their own initiative. See UBSFin. Servs., Inc. v. Childress, 2013 WL 5786444, at *3(W.D. Va. Oct. 28, 2013) (“A court may sanction anattorney who has violated Rule 11(b), and the courtmay do so on its own initiative.”). However, beforea court may do so, it must issue a show cause order,as the court did in this case. See In re Bees, 562 F.3d284, 289 (4th Cir. 2009) (“Rule 11 requires a districtcourt to order counsel ‘to show cause why conductspecifically described in the order has not violatedRule 11(b)’ prior to imposing sua sponte sanctions inorder to allow counsel to respond to specific assertedRule 11 violations.”) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c)(3)). “In issuing a show cause order, ‘[A] court isobliged to use extra care in imposing sanctions onoffending lawyers.’ ” Clehm v. BAE Sys., Inc., 2018WL 3978183, at *3 (W.D. Va. May 9, 2018) (quotingHunter v. Earthgrains Co. Bakery, 281 F.3d 144, 151(4th Cir. 2002)). The court in Hunter noted that theAdvisory Committee considered that a show cause
Kruglyak v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., --- F.Supp.3d ---- (2025) © 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.2order issued by a court on its own initiative wouldbe used “in situations that are akin to a contempt ofcourt ...” 281 F.3d at 151.*2 As stated above, Kruglyak, the pro se plaintiff,both cited to fictitious cases and misrepresented theholding of various cases in a reply brief he filedwith the court. In his Response to the court's showcause order, he conceded the inclusion of “fictitiouscases and the mischaracterizations of case holdings,”but he claimed this was not done with a purposeto mislead the court or to gain an unfair advantage.Instead, he stated that he, as a pro se litigant, reliedin good faith on publicly available, free generativeartificial intelligence, (“AI”), platforms to conductlegal research. Kruglyak explained that he had limitedaccess to legal research tools, such as LexisNexis andWestlaw, to verify the authenticity and accuracy ofhis case citations. He further explained that, whilehe was unaware at the time he filed the pleading atissue that such generative AI platforms could producefictitious or inaccurate case citations, he now haslearned that fictitious citations and case summariesmay be generated without clear warnings regardingtheir reliability.The court notes that, while generative AI platforms,such as ChatGPT1 and Gemini, can be useful toolsfor attorneys and pro se litigants alike, they continueto have their shortcomings. It has become widelyknown that such platforms sometimes “hallucinate,”meaning they provide inaccurate responses. In thelegal research context, these hallucinations caninclude the generation of fictitious case cites andmisrepresentations of case summaries or holdings, aswere provided by Kruglyak. Mata v. Avianca, Inc.,678 F. Supp. 3d 443 (S.D. N.Y. 2023), the flagshipcase on this subject, involved a personal injury suitbrought against an airline, in which one of the attorneystestified he used ChatGPT for legal research becausehe had limited access to federal cases through theresearch services and databases at his firm. See 678F. Supp. 3d at 456. He said he had heard of a newsite that he incorrectly assumed was like a “supersearch engine called ChatGPT,” which he used. Mata,678 F. Supp. 3d at 456. The attorney entered variousprompts into ChatGPT, which hallucinated holdingsand cases. See Mata, 678 F. Supp. 3d at 456-57. Hethen included these fabricated cases in a response toa pending motion to dismiss. See Mata, 678 F. Supp.3d at 450. When the attorney's reliance on fictitiouscases came to light, the judge scheduled a show causehearing, threatening sanctions under Rule 11(b)(2) and(c), among other things. See Mata, 678 F. Supp. 3d at457-58. The attorneys subsequently lied to the courtabout their availability and doubled down on the cases,claiming they were not fabricated. See Mata, 678 F.Supp. 3d at 452, 458. One of the attorneys stated ina declaration that he could not “fathom that ChatGPTcould produce multiple fictitious cases.” Mata, 678F. Supp. 3d at 458. The judge ultimately determinedthat the attorneys had acted subjectively2 in bad faithand found sanctions were appropriate under Rule 11.See Mata, 678 F. Supp. 3d at 464. A $5,000 penaltywas imposed upon the attorneys and their firm as adeterrent. See Mata, 678 F. Supp. 3d at 466.In another case out of the Second Circuit – UnitedStates v. Cohen, 724 F. Supp. 3d 251, 259 (S.D. N.Y.2024) – the court declined to impose sanctions as itfound no subjective bad faith by counsel. In that case,Cohen's counsel, Schwartz, filed a brief in supportof a request for the early termination of supervisedrelease, which contained three fictitious cases. SeeCohen, 724 F. Supp. 3d at 253-54. The district judgeordered Schwartz to provide copies of those cases,stating if he could not do so, he must “show causein writing why he should not be sanctioned” pursuantto Rule 11(b)(2) and (c), among other things, forciting the fictitious cases. United States v. Cohen, 2023WL 8635521, at *1 (Dec. 12, 2023). In response,Schwartz, Cohen and others involved in the case, fileddeclarations explaining how the fictitious cases cameto be included in the brief. See Cohen, 724 F. Supp. 3dat 254-55. Cohen stated in his declaration that he hadobtained the cases and summaries from Google Bard,which he was unaware was a generative text servicethat, like ChatGPT, could generate citations and casedescriptions that appeared real but were not. SeeCohen, 724 F. Supp. 3d at 254. Instead, he explainedthat he had understood Google Bard to be a “super-charged search engine.” See Cohen, 724 F. Supp. 3dat 254. Cohen provided his counsel with the citationsand case summaries the program generated, and hiscounsel added them to the filing without independentlyverifying their accuracy. See Cohen, 724 F. Supp. 3dat 254, 255. The district court noted that the SecondCircuit required a finding of subjective bad faith before
Kruglyak v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., --- F.Supp.3d ---- (2025) © 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.3imposing sua sponte Rule 11 sanctions. See Cohen,724 F. Supp. 3d at 258 (citing Muhammad, 732 F.3d at108). Ultimately, the judge found that this standard wasnot satisfied under these circumstances and declined toimpose sanctions. See Cohen, 724 F. Supp. 3d at 260.*3 While courts across the country have addressedthis issue, the Fourth Circuit has yet to do so. This courtencountered the issue in Iovino v. Michael StapletonAssocs., Ltd., 2024 WL 3520170 (W.D. Va. July 24,2024), in which Judge Cullen issued a show causeorder to the plaintiff after she objected to the magistratejudge's grant of the defendant's motion for a protectiveorder. In the plaintiff's objections, she cited fictitiouscases and made up quotations. In particular, she citedtwo cases that did not appear to exist, and she cited aSupreme Court opinion and a Fourth Circuit opinionthat existed, but she incorrectly attributed quotationsto them. See Iovino, 2024 WL 3520170, at *7. Theplaintiff also put great weight in her objections onMenocal v. The GEO Grp., Inc., 2017 WL 4334000(D. Colo. June 6, 2017), a case that had nothing todo with what the plaintiff claimed it did. See Iovino,2024 WL 3520170, at *7. The defendant flagged all ofthese discrepancies in its opposition brief, describingthem as the result of “ChatGPT run amok.” Iovino,2024 WL 3520170, at *7. Although the plaintiffprovided supplemental authority to the court in supportof her objections, she did not reply to explain theorigins of the fictitious citations and quotations or whoprimarily was to blame for this “gross error.” Iovino,2024 WL 3520170, at *7. Judge Cullen stated, “[t]hissilence is deafening.” Iovino, 2024 WL 3520170, at*7. Therefore, the court, in order to “uphold theintegrity of the[ ] proceedings and understand wherethe purportedly false references originated,” orderedplaintiff's counsel to show cause why they should notbe sanctioned under Rule 11(c). See Iovino, 2024 WL3520170, at *7. However, the plaintiff filed an appealto the Fourth Circuit, and counsel did not respond tothe court's show cause order.3As the court stated in Iovino, Rule 11(c) allows districtcourts to sanction parties when they act in bad faithand engage in deliberate misconduct in an effort todeceive the court. See 2024 WL 3520170, at *6 (citingParker v. N.C. Agric. Fin. Auth., 341 B.R. 547, 554(E.D. Va. 2006), aff'd sub nom. Iles v. N.C. Agric.Fin. Auth., 249 F. App'x 304 (4th Cir. 2007)). It alsoincludes when attorneys do not take the “necessarycare in their preparation” of court filings because suchfilings are an abuse of the judicial system, “burdeningcourts and individuals alike with needless expenseand delay.” Iovino, 2024 WL 3520170, at *6 (quotingCooter & Gell, 496 U.S. at 398, 110 S.Ct. 2447). A keypurpose of Rule 11 is to incentivize attorneys “to stop,think[,] and investigate more carefully before servingand filing papers.” Iovino, 2024 WL 3520170, at *6(quoting Cooter & Gell, 496 U.S. at 398, 110 S.Ct.2447) (cleaned up). If counsel relies on AI or othertechnology to draft a filing, he remains responsible forensuring the filing is accurate and does not containfabricated caselaw or quotations. See Iovino, 2024 WL3520170, at *6 (citing, e.g., Mescall v. Renaissance atAntiquity, 2023 WL 7490841, at *1 n.1 (W.D. N.C.Nov. 13, 2023)).Here, in his Response, Kruglyak states he has ceasedrelying on generative AI tools to identify caselawwithout independently verifying each citation. Hefurther states he has sought access to reliable legalresearch tools, including public law libraries and othercredible databases. Kruglyak asks that the court treatthe inclusion of the fictitious citations as a scrivener'serror, and he requests the court's permission to amendthe pleading to substitute accurate case citations for theerroneous ones. Relying on Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S.519, 92 S.Ct. 594, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1972), and In reKunstler, 914 F.2d 505, he asks the court not to imposesanctions. Specifically, he argues that, as a pro selitigant, he is entitled to leniency in procedural mattersand should not be subjected to sanctions absent clearevidence of bad faith or intentional misconduct. SeeHaines, 404 U.S. at 520, 92 S.Ct. 594. Additionally,he argues that courts have discretion to consider alitigant's lack of legal resources and intent whendetermining whether to impose sanctions. See In reKunstler, 914 F.2d at 514.I find that the imposition of monetary sanctions is notappropriate in this case. Most importantly, Kruglyakhas represented to the court that he was not awarethe caselaw he cited was fictitious and/or that hemisrepresented the holdings of cases. The court hasno reason to doubt the veracity of this statement.Moreover, once brought to his attention, Kruglyakpromptly admitted his use of generative AI tools inconducting legal research, the use of which produced
Kruglyak v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., --- F.Supp.3d ---- (2025) © 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.4the hallucinated results, and he has represented to thecourt that he now has access to more credible sources.Under these circumstances, the court finds that, whileKruglyak's actions were negligent, they do not evincebad faith, either subjective or objective, on his part.Nonetheless, the court ORDERS that, going forward,Kruglyak must identify any cases that are the result oflegal research performed with generative AI, and heis responsible for verifying their accuracy. Kruglyak iscautioned that, if he fails to do this, he is subject tobeing held in contempt of court and losing the abilityto proceed pro se in this matter. Lastly, Kruglyak'srequest to amend the pleading to substitute correctedcase citations is DENIED.All Citations--- F.Supp.3d ----, 2025 WL 900621Footnotes1ChatGPT, owned by OpenAI, is one of the most popular generative AI models. Gemini is Google's AI modeland was formerly known as Google Bard. See zdnet.com/article/best-ai-chatbot/ (last visited Mar. 20, 2025).2The Second Circuit requires a finding that the party acted with subjective bad faith when imposing sanctionssua sponte under Rule 11. See Mata, 678 F. Supp. 3d at 462 (citing Muhammad v. Walmart Stores E., L.P.,732 F.3d 104, 108 (2d Cir. 2013)). However, most other courts have utilized an objective bad faith standard.See, e.g., Wharton v. Superintendent Graterford SCI, 95 F.4th 140, 148 (3d Cir. 2024); Jenkins v. MethodistHosps. of Dall., Inc., 478 F.3d 255, 264 (5th Cir. 2007); Young v. City of Providence ex rel. Napolitano, 404F.3d 33, 39 (1st Cir. 2005).3Thus, even though the Western District of Virginia has, in fact, encountered the issue, it has not had theopportunity to resolve it.End of Document© 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S.Government Works.
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