Harvard morgue case lawyer denied pro hac vice status over AI cites

In brief

• A Superior Court judge denied an attorney’s pro hac vice motion in the Harvard morgue litigation.
• The lawyer previously received sanctions in Wyoming after filings contained AI-generated fake case citations.
• The judge found the lawyer failed to fully disclose his response to the Wyoming sanction and committed procedural violations in Massachusetts.
• Attorneys say the ruling signals stricter judicial scrutiny of AI-assisted legal drafting and attorney supervision obligations.

A scion of the founders of national personal injury Goliath Morgan & Morgan will not get the chance to help represent families suing Harvard over the alleged mistreatment of their loved ones’ donated remains because a Superior Court judge wasn’t satisfied with his disclosure of a sanction he had received from a Wyoming judge after failing to detect that an associate had included a number of hallucinated case citations in filings.

T. Michael Morgan, the son of Morgan & Morgan founders John and Ultima Morgan, disclosed the Wyoming sanction in his motion for admission to appear pro hac vice in the Harvard morgue case, referencing a singular “hallucinated case citation.”

However, as Wyoming U.S. District Court Judge Kelly H. Rankin noted in his February 2025 order, the motions cited nine cases, eight of which did not exist. The fake cases had been generated in response to queries made to Morgan & Morgan’s in-house artificial intelligence tool, MX2.law.

Rankin gave the drafter of the motions, Morgan’s colleague Rudwin Ayala, the most severe sanction: a $3,000 fine and revocation of his pro hac vice status in Wyoming.

While he considered Morgan’s conduct “less severe,” Rankin still found that Morgan failed to adhere to his obligations under Rule 11.

“His reliance on Mr. Ayala’s experience was understandable, but he still has a nondelegable duty to ensure a motion is supported by existing law,” Rankin wrote of Morgan.

Rankin also credited Morgan and Ayala for promptly withdrawing the motions, being honest and forthcoming about the AI use, paying opposing counsel’s fees for defending the motions in limine, and providing proof that they had implemented policies, safeguards and training to prevent a recurrence.

But that didn’t satisfy Superior Court Judge Kenneth W. Salinger, who on May 18 exercised his discretion to deny Morgan’s motion to appear in the Harvard morgue case.

“The Court is troubled by Morgan’s demonstrated failure in the Wyoming case to live up to the ethical standards required of trial lawyers,” Salinger wrote. “Its concern is heightened by Morgan’s decision to practice law in Massachusetts without permission, by filing his motion in violation of the statute (G.L.c. 221, §46A) and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rule (SJC Rule 3:15) that govern pro hac vice motions.”

“[I]f Morgan had complied with his ethical obligation to review the motions in limine before they were filed, he should have recognized that the odd and truncated form of the case citations raised obvious questions about whether they were real,” Salinger noted, calling Morgan’s ethical transgression “quite serious.”

“Trial lawyers cannot file legal papers supported by fake case citations,” he wrote. “More senior attorneys have just as much responsibility as any lawyers whom they supervise to review motions and legal memoranda and ensure that they are accurate and do not contain made up case law or evidence.”

What Salinger failed to find in Morgan’s motion was an “attempt to show that he has changed his practice to comply with his obligation to review any papers filed in court over his signature, or that he has taken any steps to ensure that he and his law firm do not file legal memorandum citing nonexistent case law in the future.”

“This omission is surprising. And troubling,” Salinger wrote.

Morgan then compounded his problems by demonstrating “disregard for the Massachusetts statute and SJC rule that govern requests for permission to appear pro hac vice in Massachusetts courts.”

One problem was that Morgan had designated himself — instead of a member of the Massachusetts bar — as the “movant” in his motion.

Because he was neither licensed to practice in Massachusetts nor received permission from the court to appear pro hac vice, this constituted improper practice of law, in Salinger’s estimation.

“Morgan’s decision to flout Massachusetts law in this manner is not a minor technical violation,” Salinger wrote.

Morgan had also not paid the correct pro hac vice registration fee to the Board of Bar Overseers, paying $100 instead of the required $355, Salinger noted.

“In sum, these further transgressions suggest that Morgan has not learned from the mistakes that he made in the Federal case in Wyoming, and that at least for now he cannot be trusted to comply with Massachusetts law and procedural rules,” Salinger concluded. “They are a further reason why the Court is exercising its discretion to deny Morgan’s pro hac vice motion.”

Morgan had not responded to a request for comment as of Lawyers Weekly’s deadline.

The failure to comply with the requirements of the pro hac vice rules of the court and related statute may have been “the straw that broke the camel’s back” for Salinger, says Boston attorney Robert M. Buchholz, who represents lawyers in state disciplinary proceedings.

“That’s the easy stuff,” he says of checking all the rules’ boxes.

That misstep may have prompted Salinger to “dig a little bit deeper” into the Wyoming issue, he surmises.

Boston attorney Michael J. Rossi agrees, calling the confluence of the two sets of issues “something of a perfect storm.”

“This decision should not be read too broadly as just another ‘AI hallucination’ sanctions case,” he says. “The court was clearly alarmed by the applicant’s conduct in the Wyoming matter, but the decision reflects a broader exercise of judicial discretion in pro hac vice admissions.”

The recency of the Wyoming situation also likely played a role, says Boston attorney Jennifer Mikels. The benefit of more time might have helped Morgan present more compelling evidence that he and his firm had, in fact, tightened up their practices, she says.

The lesson, Mikels says, is that lawyers gain little from making less than a fulsome disclosure of a past misstep when seeking pro hac vice admission.

“If you’re going to make the disclosure, make the full disclosure, simply because having everything in one place makes the judge’s job to understand the facts of your circumstances easier,” she says.

Rossi agrees.

“Decision-makers want to see evidence that the lawyer has taken genuine ownership of the past conduct, reflected on its causes, and translated that reflection into concrete, verifiable changes in practice that are designed to prevent it from happening again,” he says.

The decision also highlights a significant shift in law firm practice norms related to AI use, Rossi adds.

“There was a time when many partners would feel comfortable signing a motion substantially prepared by an associate without personally reading and verifying the authorities cited,” Rossi says. “The court is signaling that those days are over, at least where AI-assisted drafting tools are involved.”

Indeed, Buchholz notes that some judges have even begun to hold lawyers accountable for failing to detect hallucinated case citations in their opponents’ briefs.

“You could argue that standard has always been the standard, but that’s pretty brutal,” he says.

The class action before Salinger seeks to compensate families who, when they agreed to participate in the Harvard Anatomical Gift Program, expected Harvard to treat their loved ones with the “utmost dignity and respect.”

“However, to their absolute shock and horror, the families who placed this deep trust in Harvard have learned that, instead of caring properly for and protecting the remains entrusted to them, Harvard abandoned the remains in a facility that was a place of freakish desecration, where, according to the indictments, criminals were allowed to roam and pick over their loved ones’ remains for bits like trinkets at a flea market,” the plaintiffs’ amended complaint reads.

After a lower court judge had dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims, the Supreme Judicial Court revived the case last October, ruling that they had sufficiently alleged Harvard failed to act in good faith under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.