From Judge Aileen Cannon (S.D. Fla.) in Paulk v. Larva Labs, LLC, a decision issued in June and only recently posted on Westlaw:
In the Florida federal court decision authored by Judge Aileen Cannon, the Paulk v. Larva Labs, LLC matter centers on whether the defendant engaged in deceptive interference with the plaintiff’s NFTs. The plaintiff, who initially filed the complaint in a Florida state court on January 20, 2026, contends that in June 2017 he used publicly available software to generate 141 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Each NFT allegedly embodies ownership of a distinctive CryptoPunk drawn from the original release, known as Version 1 (V1), a landmark generative-art project featuring 24-by-24 pixel portraits. To mint these NFTs, the plaintiff paid only nominal “gas fees,” the charges paid to third-party validators on Ethereum, and the NFTs have purportedly remained in a dormant wallet under the plaintiff’s control ever since.
The plaintiff asserts that on June 23, 2017, the defendant released a second edition, Version 2 (V2), claiming that V1 contained a “bug.” The complaint further alleges that the defendant suppressed activity around V1 on the marketplace while promoting V2 as the sole authoritative collection, thereby diminishing the commercial value of the plaintiff’s assets. Based on these allegations, the plaintiff asserts four causes of action—fraudulent concealment (Count I), unjust enrichment (Count II), declaratory relief (Count III), and injunctive relief (Count IV)—and seeks unspecified monetary damages along with an injunction.
The court then turned to a range of procedural questions before adding the following observation:
Separately, the Court expresses a broader concern regarding the sheer volume of filings that appear to have been generated by artificial intelligence and submitted by the plaintiff, containing arguments that lack support and merit for the court’s consideration [see, e.g., ECF Nos. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 26-1, 31, 32, 33]. As one example, the plaintiff incorrectly argues that the citizenship of the defendant’s counsel can determine complete diversity.
Many of the plaintiff’s filings include disclaimers addressed to the Court, expressly certifying “that every legal authority, statutory provision, rule of procedure, and historical case citation referenced within [the filings] has been independently read, analyzed, verified, and cross-referenced against official federal and state legal repositories.” In each of these filings, “Plaintiff guarantees that every cited case stands as valid, binding law within the United States Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, possesses an active and unchecked standing, and accurately represents the procedural postures asserted.” He further warrants that no “fictitious or unverified citations” have been included and that he has “manually double-checked” each case to ensure it “supports Plaintiff’s cause perfectly, ensuring that no unverified or ‘hallucinated’ data is presented to the Court.”
Surely the plaintiff’s artificial intelligence-driven counsel advised him to state all of this. The approach—while commendable in spirit, that litigants should not mislead the Court—did not translate into practice on the plaintiff’s side. He cites to “Snapper v. Redan, 523 U.S. 83 (1998)”—a non-existent case—for the notion that when a company’s chief legal representative has been formally notified at a publicly advertised professional office address, the entity cannot claim an administrative breakdown within its secondary commercial mail hubs as a basis to vacate a default that would otherwise be valid. However, the actual decision the plaintiff appears to intend is Snapper, Inc. v. Redan (11th Cir. 1999), which is an Eleventh Circuit case addressing the authority of federal appellate courts to review remand orders based on the enforcement of forum-selection clauses and says nothing about vacatur, defaults, or mail. It does not support the plaintiff’s asserted proposition at all.
In light of the misstatement, the plaintiff breached his duty of candor to the court and violated Rule 11. Consequently, the court imposes the following sanctions:
- Until Defendant’s forthcoming Motion to Dismiss is resolved, the plaintiff may not file any motion or docket entry unless he first files a motion for leave to file and obtains the court’s permission to proceed. Any filing made without this prior judicial approval will be stricken without further notice.
- Regardless of the foregoing, the plaintiff may submit an opposition to the forthcoming Motion to Dismiss in accordance with the court’s local rules. See S.D. Fla. L. R. 7.1(c). Given the plaintiff’s prior AI-related missteps, any such opposition must be handwritten and must avoid inaccurate citations or any invented authority. Failure to comply with any part of this Order may lead the court to grant the Motion to Dismiss by default.
The plaintiff did not respond to the motion to dismiss, and in a subsequent ruling the court granted the motion.
