Minnesota’s court rules don’t say a word about artificial intelligence. I searched the civil procedure rules, the general rules of practice, the appellate rules, the criminal rules, the evidence rules, and the professional-conduct rules, cover to cover. Not once.
They don’t need to. The rule that catches a lawyer who files a fake case was rewritten in 2000 to “conform completely to the federal rule”, and it couldn’t care less how the brief got written. It cares whether the person who signed it checked.
So if you just found out a brief in your case cites a case that doesn’t exist, whether it’s the other side’s brief or your own lawyer’s, start here. Nobody gets in trouble for using AI. They get in trouble for signing.
What does a lawyer’s signature on a brief actually promise?
More than most people think. Minn. R. Civ. P. 11.02 opens like this:
By presenting to the court (whether by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating) a pleading, written motion, or other document, an attorney or self-represented litigant is certifying that to the best of the person’s knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances:
A list follows, and a fake case drives straight into clause (b): “the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions therein are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law or the establishment of new law”. A case that doesn’t exist isn’t existing law. You can’t break that promise much cleaner.
The federal rule makes the same promise in nearly the same words: Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b), “formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances”. Minnesota’s sanctions statute, § 549.211, subd. 2, says it a third time. Not one of the three asks what software you used, or whether a paralegal, an associate, or a chatbot wrote the first draft. The chatbot doesn’t have a bar number. The lawyer does.
The test is the signer’s inquiry. The Minnesota Supreme Court said so back in 1990: “an affirmative duty is imposed on counsel to investigate the factual and legal underpinnings of a pleading”, and “The standard now is one of reasonableness under the circumstances.” Uselman v. Uselman, 464 N.W.2d 130, 142–43 (Minn. 1990). When the rule was rewritten in 2000, the advisory committee told courts to keep following Uselman.
So AI never needed its own rule. The duty was already there, waiting for it.
And see the two words in the parentheses? “later advocating”. The promise isn’t made once, at filing. You make it again every time you stand behind the paper. That matters the day somebody points out the problem.
What happened when a Stanford expert’s declaration cited articles that don’t exist?
The best Minnesota example is almost too on the nose. It didn’t involve a lawyer’s brief. It involved an expert.
Kohls v. Ellison was a federal challenge to Minnesota’s election deepfake statute, and the Attorney General filed two expert declarations opposing a preliminary injunction. One came from Jeff Hancock, a Stanford communication professor who directs the Stanford Social Media Lab. The plaintiffs moved to exclude it, saying it contained fabricated material. They were right. Professor Hancock admitted the declaration cited two academic articles that don’t exist and got the authors wrong on a third. The errors apparently came from GPT-4o, which he’d used while drafting, and he hadn’t checked what it gave him.
Judge Laura Provinzino’s order of January 10, 2025, summed it up in two words: “The irony.” The expert “has fallen victim to the siren call of relying too heavily on AI—in a case that revolves around the dangers of AI, no less.”
But the court wasn’t punishing the software. It said exactly what it was punishing:
But, at the end of the day, even if the errors were an innocent mistake, and even if the propositions are substantively accurate, the fact remains that Professor Hancock submitted a declaration made under penalty of perjury with fake citations.
Everybody did the right thing after the fact. The Attorney General’s office conceded the errors and asked to file a corrected declaration. Counsel apologized at oral argument. The professor offered an explanation the court called “helpful, thorough, and plausible”. The court took the Attorney General at his word, said it didn’t believe the fake sources were intentional, and commended both of them for promptly owning the problem.
Didn’t matter. Citing fake sources, the court wrote, “shatters his credibility with this Court.” The declaration was excluded in full for the preliminary-injunction motion, and the request to swap in a corrected version was denied as moot. The other expert’s declaration came in. This one didn’t.
But the Court cannot accept false statements—innocent or not—in an expert’s declaration submitted under penalty of perjury.
The apology bought praise. It didn’t buy the evidence back.
The court also reminded the lawyers that Rule 11 imposes a “personal, nondelegable responsibility”, quoting the Supreme Court, and then it suggested that an “inquiry reasonable under the circumstances” “may now require attorneys to ask their witnesses whether they have used AI in drafting their declarations and what they have done to verify any AI-generated content.” So the inquiry may not stop at the lawyer’s own keyboard. It may reach the people whose words the lawyer files.
When the case went up, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the denial of the injunction on February 9, 2026, because the only plaintiff with standing had waited too long to ask for one. Its opinion never mentions Professor Hancock.
State court uses a different test for expert evidence, and I covered it at Minnesota’s Frye-Mack standard. Minnesota also has two statutes where the expert affidavit is the gate itself and a defective one can end the case. An expert’s citations are your citations. Courts read them that way.
Who pays when it’s your own lawyer’s brief with the fake case?
Under the sanctions rules, mostly the lawyer. Rule 11.03(b)(1) doesn’t mince words: “Monetary sanctions may not be awarded against a represented party for a violation of Rule 11.02(b).” The statute matches, § 549.211, subd. 5(b), and so does the federal rule, Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c)(5)(A). A fake case is a legal-contention problem, so a money sanction under those provisions runs to the lawyer and the firm, not to you.
Two cautions. That’s the rule-based sanction, and Rule 11.03 says it “does not limit the imposition of sanctions authorized by other rules, statutes, or the inherent power of the court.” And money isn’t the only thing a case can lose. Go back to Kohls. Nobody got fined. The party just lost its evidence.
That’s the part a client feels. A brief struck or cut down. An argument the judge won’t credit. A court that reads everything else your lawyer files with one eyebrow up. The sanction lands on the lawyer. The damage lands on you.
If it’s your lawyer, you want two answers: what happened, and what’s been filed to fix it. Minnesota’s competence rule, Minn. R. Prof. Conduct 1.1, requires “the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness, and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation”, and its comment tells lawyers to keep up with “the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology”. Whether a bad citation is a bad day or something more is a question about your lawyer’s work. Put that question to a different lawyer.
What if the fake case is in the other side’s brief?
Then you’ve got leverage. And a clock.
A Rule 11 motion has to be served and then held for 21 days before it can be filed, and if the other side withdraws or corrects the fake citation inside that window, the motion can’t be filed at all. That’s on purpose. I wrote about how unforgiving that 21-day safe harbor is, so I’ll skip the encore. For a fake case, that means a lawyer who quietly fixes the brief on day 20 walks away from the motion. Three weeks to go read your own citations. Generous.
The judge doesn’t have to wait, though. Under Rule 11.03(a)(2) the court can act “On its own initiative” by an order to show cause, and the safe harbor doesn’t apply to that route. Want your fees? The rule ties a fee award to a sanction “imposed on motion”, so the motion still earns its keep.
And you may not need a sanctions motion at all. The Kohls plaintiffs never filed one. They moved to exclude, and they won. Before a fake citation is anything else, it’s a reason not to believe the paper it’s in.
One limit worth knowing: Rule 11 doesn’t reach discovery. Rule 11.04 says Rules 11.01 through 11.03 “do not apply to discovery requests, responses, objections, and motions that are subject to the provisions of Rules 26 through 37.” A fabricated case in a discovery motion gets handled under the discovery-sanctions rules instead.
Fake cases don’t catch themselves. Somebody on your side has to pull every citation and read it. And the fake case is the easy catch, because there’s nothing there to find. I’ve written for lawyers about the nastier failure: the real case cited for something it never said.
Once you know, it’s a different problem
Here’s the rule that changes the stakes. Minn. R. Prof. Conduct 3.3(a)(1):
A lawyer shall not knowingly:
(1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal, or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer;
Everything hangs on “knowingly”, and on that second half. A lawyer who filed a hallucinated case without knowing it was fake has a competence problem and a Rule 11 problem. One who learns it’s fake and sits on it has a candor problem too. Rule 11.02 points the same way with “later advocating”: every brief that defends the bad citation makes the promise all over again.
Filing the fake case is a competence failure. Defending it once you know is a candor failure. The second one’s worse, and nobody stumbles into it.
The Attorney General’s office in Kohls showed how it’s done. It conceded the errors and moved to correct them. The court said it “appreciates his candor in rectifying the issue.” It still excluded the declaration. Fixing it fast doesn’t erase the problem. It keeps a competence problem from becoming a candor problem.
Minnesota hasn’t written an AI rule for lawyers. It doesn’t need one.
The federal court here answered the disclosure question on paper. The District of Minnesota’s GenAI FAQ, dated October 1, 2025: “The District of Minnesota does not currently require disclosure of AI use in court filings.” Then who’s holding the bag: “pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 11 and 26(g), you are ultimately responsible for the accuracy and sufficiency of the resulting work product”. And its practice pointer asks more than a lot of lawyers bother with: “Confirm that GenAI-provided legal research and citations are valid references to existing caselaw, statutes, or regulations that have not been superseded or overruled, and that cited excerpts are not taken out of context.” That’s an FAQ, not a rule, and it doesn’t replace any individual judge’s practice pointers. Check those case by case.
The state rules haven’t changed because they never had to. The signature line was always the AI policy.
Courts aren’t asking lawyers to quit using AI. They’re asking them to read what they sign.
Madgett Law, LLC
Madgett Law, LLC handles civil litigation in Minnesota state and federal court, including motion practice where sanctions are threatened, sought, or defended. If a brief in your case cites authority that doesn’t hold up, on either side of the caption, let’s talk before the next filing deadline. You can read more about our general litigation practice. Call me at 612-470-6529 or send us a message.
Sources: Minn. R. Civ. P. 11.02 (preamble, “later advocating” and “inquiry reasonable under the circumstances”; 11.02(b), legal contentions), 11.03 (preamble preserving other rules, statutes, and inherent power; 11.03(a)(1), 21-day safe harbor for a motion; 11.03(a)(2), court’s own initiative; 11.03(b), fees to movant only on motion; 11.03(b)(1), no monetary sanction against a represented party for 11.02(b)), 11.04 (inapplicability to discovery), and Advisory Committee Comment – 2000 Amendment, revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/cp/id/11/. Minn. Stat. § 549.211, subd. 2 (certification) and subd. 5(b) (represented party). Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b) (certification), 11(c)(3) (show cause), and 11(c)(5)(A) (represented party). Minn. R. Prof. Conduct 1.1 and cmt. [8] (competence; technology) and 3.3(a)(1) (candor; duty to correct). Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure, General Rules of Practice, Rules of Civil Appellate Procedure, Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rules of Evidence, and Rules of Professional Conduct, full compilations at revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/ (no reference to artificial intelligence). Uselman v. Uselman, 464 N.W.2d 130, 142–43 (Minn. 1990) (affirmative duty to investigate; reasonableness standard). Kohls v. Ellison, No. 24-cv-3754 (LMP/DLM), ECF No. 46 (D. Minn. Jan. 10, 2025), at 2–3 (background), 7–12 (Hancock declaration excluded; leave to amend denied as moot), 9 (quoting Pavelic & LeFlore v. Marvel Ent. Grp., 493 U.S. 120, 126–27 (1989)), 9–10 (reasonable inquiry may require asking witnesses about AI use); companion order denying preliminary injunction, ECF No. 47 (D. Minn. Jan. 10, 2025), aff’d, Kohls v. Ellison, No. 25-1300 (8th Cir. Feb. 9, 2026) (delay in seeking relief). Harris v. Lindell, No. A24-0055 (Minn. Ct. App. Aug. 5, 2024) (nonprecedential). U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota, GenAI FAQ (Oct. 1, 2025). This article is general commentary on Minnesota and federal court rules and published decisions. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no particular outcome is promised or implied.