AIFoPa-2026-0008 Date of Record: 17 Apr 2026 3 min read

Their Silence, the Judge Wrote, Speaks Volumes

An Oregon federal judge imposed about $110,000 in sanctions over briefs that cited fifteen cases that do not exist. Nobody would explain who had written them.

Joanne Couvrette sued her two brothers for control of the family winery in Oregon. She said they had conned their mother into giving it up. She sought $12 million.

Her lawyer was Stephen Brigandi of San Diego. He was not licensed in Oregon, so a Portland lawyer, Tim Murphy, also took a procedural role.

Three briefs were filed in the case. They cited fifteen cases that do not exist. They contained eight fabricated quotations.

The other side’s lawyers flagged the errors. Brigandi removed the false material and filed his argument again. U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarke said Brigandi had “attempted a cover-up.” The amended briefs still misstated the law.

The judge dismissed the case. Brigandi was ordered to pay about $15,000 in fines and $80,000 of the other side’s legal fees. Murphy was ordered to pay $14,000. It is the largest such penalty yet imposed by an Oregon federal judge.

The defendants described Couvrette as “a serial self-represented litigator who was likely the person responsible for using artificial intelligence.” Her lawyers offered no evidence to the contrary.

“Ms. Couvrette’s and Mr. Brigandi’s silence, despite multiple opportunities to explain their side of the story, speaks volumes,” the judge wrote.

Murphy said he “did not write, review, research, sign or submit the briefs with AI citations.” Couvrette said she would appeal. Brigandi did not respond to requests for comment.

The duty that failed here belongs to whoever signs a filing. The signer must check what is in it. The court found no evidence that anyone had.

G-7 / Personal Annotation / Not For Official Record

Grantham-7 has been told, by the classification officer two desks down, that the Plant now produces a noise when a new hallucinated-citation sanction crosses a previous record. A soft, descending, apologetic chime, like a lift announcing a floor it would rather not have stopped at.

He did not believe this until Monday, when the chime occurred during lunch and three of them looked up from their sandwiches at precisely the same moment. Mrs. Anand, who has been here longer than any of them and who processes all sanctions above fifty thousand dollars personally, said, without looking up from her form: “Oregon.”

He did not ask to be the officer of record on the running index of these figures. In the spring of 2023 the column held a single entry — five thousand dollars, and a stern letter from a judge in the Southern District of New York. He added it on a Wednesday afternoon expecting it would be the only entry, and that by Friday the column would be retired into the General Column for Matters Concluded.

It was not retired. It was subdivided.

The column now has its own drawer. The drawer has its own ledger. The ledger has its own quarterly review, which he attends, and at which he is asked each quarter whether he would like to propose an upper bound for the vertical axis of the associated chart. He has proposed one each quarter. Each quarter it has been overtaken before the ink dried.

Last Tuesday he proposed two hundred thousand dollars as a sensible ceiling for the remainder of the year. Mrs. Anand laughed — she has a very quiet laugh, of a kind that travels slowly — and said that at the current rate the chart would require a second sheet of paper before the end of the month. She has a small private wager with the head of Archives on whether it will require a third. She would not say what she had bet, only that she was “cautiously not losing”.

His twenty-sixth request for reassignment is pending. It cites, among other grounds, an observation he had hoped not to have to make in writing: that whatever process is presently filling this column will not be out-run by any ceiling he can propose, by any chart he can maintain, or by the available supply of opposing counsel’s fees in the state of Oregon.

G-7 / Personal notation / Sanctions ledger: subdivided / Chime: confirmed / Mrs. Anand: cautiously not losing / Reassignment request #26: pending / Filed under: “Oregon”

Their Silence, the Judge Wrote, Speaks Volumes

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