On Thursday, February 5, 2026, Judge Katherine Polk Failla entered default judgment against Affable Avenue LLC in response to its lawyer, Steven A. Feldman, repeatedly filing documents containing false citations.
On December 11, 2024, Flycatcher Corp Ltd. and Flycatcher Toys, Inc. sued Affable Avenue LLC (“Affable”) and other defendants in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging trademark infringement, unfair competition, deceptive trade practices, fostering the sale of stolen goods, and unfair competition. On June 26, 2025, counsel for defendant Top Experience Company LLC wrote a letter to the court to express concern that Feldman “us[ed] an artificial intelligence (‘AI’) large language model such as ChatGPT” to draft Affable’s brief, “resulting in significant errors.” This letter pointed out “at least thirteen cases Mr. Feldman cited that did not exist, and eight cases that did exist but did not contain the quotes Mr. Feldman attributed to them.” The letter also pointed to the largely duplicative “Introduction” and “Preliminary Statement” sections of the brief as evidence that Feldman used a large language model.
The lawyer for Top Experience Company LLC, Joel MacMull, tried to get Feldman to correct the false citations. Feldman, instead, wrote back to MacMull, “offering a convoluted excuse for the errors (one that he would later repeat to the Court) and claiming that he was ‘unable to verify certain citations’ due to discontinued access to certain legal research databases.” After some discussion between the two lawyers, Feldman emailed MacMull and lied about notifying opposing counsel and the court of the citation issues and about filing a corrected document.
Judge Failla eventually issued an order to show cause as to why Affable’s brief should not be stricken from the docket and sanctions imposed upon Feldman. One day after the given deadline, Feldman submitted a response to the order, “noteworthy for its conspicuously florid prose.” The response quoted Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and included “metaphors comparing legal advocacy to gardening and the leaving of indelible ‘mark[s] upon the clay.'” Flycatcher opposed Affable’s request to submit revised papers, to which Feldman filed a reply. “The first paragraph of the July 14 Letter is riddled with mistakes and broken prose. . . It is nine lines long but comprises a single run-on sentence. . . It contains capitalization errors.” Judge Failla scrutinized these documents and found yet another problematic citation. Feldman continued by submitting another document with a false citation.
Judge Failla agreed with Feldman that the false citations were the product of AI hallucinations – “it is the only explanation the Court credits.” Judge Failla noted that attempting to flesh out Feldman’s description of his research process “is a difficult task because he offered multiple, often inconsistent explanations.” Ultimately, Judge Failla noted that the issues with the filings “are not the use of AI per se, but rather Mr. Feldman’s (i) knowing decision to use flawed methods of legal research and cite-checking; (ii) his inexplicable refusal to verify his submissions before filing them with the Court; and (iii) his unwillingness to come clean once these issues were revealed to the Court.”
Judge Failla ruled that Feldman repeatedly violated Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 11 and sanctioned Feldman by entering default judgment against Affable.
Additional Reading
Lawyer sets new standard for abuse of AI; judge tosses case, Ars Technica (February 6, 2026)
Flycatcher Corp. Ltd. et al v. Affable Avenue LLC et al (Case No. 1:2024cv09429)
Opinion and Order in Flycatcher Corp. Ltd. et al v. Affable Avenue LLC et al
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