From Whiting v. City of Athens, decided yesterday by Sixth Circuit Judge John Bush, joined by Judges Jane Stranch and Eric Murphy:
These consolidated appeals concern several lawsuits filed over an incident at the annual fireworks show hosted by the City of Athens, Tennessee, in 2022, and the subsequent fallout. By separate opinion issued this date, we affirm the district court in all respects.
This opinion addresses the misconduct of Glenn Whiting's lawyers, Van Irion and Russ Egli, in their briefing before this court and the sanctions we impose for it. That briefing repeatedly misrepresented the record, cited non-existent cases, and cited cases for propositions of law that they did not even discuss, much less support….
[W]e found over two dozen fake citations and misrepresentations of fact in Whiting's briefs, which we list in an appendix to this opinion. {This is a conservative estimate. We call something a "fake citation" or "misrepresentation of fact" only when it is clearly so. We do not include typos or sloppy citations. "As those mistakes could be attributed to simple sloppiness in drafting, as opposed to a failure to comply with the basic obligations of legal counsel, they are not the subject of this" opinion. If we included typos and other errors that are arguably, but not clearly, a misrepresentation or fake citation, we would be looking at far more misstatements of fact and law.}
Upon discovering these problems, we ordered Irion and Egli to show cause why they should not be sanctioned. The order instructed them to (1) explain why they should not be sanctioned for citing fake cases, (2) provide a copy from Westlaw or LexisNexis of all the cases and authorities cited in all of the briefs filed across the three appeals, (3) highlight any material that they quoted from those cases, (4) tell us who wrote the briefs in each case, (5) tell us whether the briefs were ghostwritten in whole or in part, (6) tell us whether they used generative AI to write the briefs, and (7) explain how they cite-checked the briefs.
Irion and Egli did not respond to these directives. Instead, they said the show cause order was "void on its face for failing to include a signature of an Article III judge," was "motivated by harassment of the Respondent attorneys," and "reflect[ed] illegal ex-parte [sic] communications within this Court." …
