Since 1 August every signature on an Indiana trial court filing certifies that any cited legal authority is authentic, and the rule says so about AI expressly

Why the court says it acted

The order is unusually plain about its own cause. It records that during the 2026 Judicial District Meetings, trial court judges informed the Court of increasing concerns about "voluminous and disorganized litigant filings, including filings prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence and filings containing fictitious legal authority or fabricated legal citations."

The stated harms follow: "These issues have caused a delay in case progression, a drain on limited judicial resources, and a threat to public confidence in the judiciary."

That is a workload rationale as much as an ethics one. It explains why the remedy is a certification and a striking power rather than a disciplinary referral scheme. Read that way, the remedy is aimed at stopping the filings from arriving rather than only at punishing them once they have arrived. That is our reading of the recitals, not something the order states about its own purpose.

The clause that does the work

Amended Rule 11(B) rewrites what an attorney's signature certifies. Alongside the familiar representations about evidentiary support and warranted legal contentions, the genuinely new clause is short: "that any cited legal authority is authentic".

Authenticity is a different test from accuracy or from relevance. A citation can be authentic and still be a bad authority for the proposition, but a case that does not exist can never satisfy it. The authenticity clause sits in the same series as representations qualified by "to the best of the attorney's knowledge, information, and belief". Whether that qualifier reaches it is not something the order settles, and we do not resolve it. It is the first question a practitioner will ask.

New Rule 11(F) makes the scope explicit. It states that the rule "applies to all pleadings, motions, and other submissions to the court by parties represented by an attorney, including without limitation those prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence, the internet, or other resources."

Rule 11(C) supplies the consequence in the same breath: "A court may strike any filing not in compliance with this rule."

Self represented litigants get their own rule

New Rule 11.1 mirrors the attorney rule for parties not represented by counsel, with the same scope language about artificial intelligence, the internet, or other resources, and the same certification that any cited legal authority is authentic. It also requires the signer to give a mailing address, telephone number and email address where available, subject to the access to court records rules.

Practitioners should not overlook Rule 11.1. The order's own stated concerns are filings prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence and filings containing fictitious or fabricated authority, and it does not attribute either category to represented or self represented filers specifically. Indiana addressed self represented litigants in a separate rule rather than relying on the attorney signature rule alone.

Rule 11.2 and the abusive litigant finding

New Rule 11.2 is the structural addition. It lets a court, on a party's motion or on its own initiative and after considering a filer's litigation history, find that a filer is an abusive litigant. The definition includes a filer who engages in conduct that may include "filing frivolous, unreasonable, groundless, or repetitive claims; litigating claims in bad faith; citing fictitious legal authority; or egregiously violating the Rules of Trial Procedure or Rules on Access to Court Records."

The rule lists citing fictitious legal authority separately from litigating claims in bad faith. Whether the two grounds operate independently of each other is not something the order addresses.

On a finding, the court may impose tailored conditions and restrictions. The rule lists eleven and says the court may impose them "without limitation". Among them: a perjury affidavit with future filings, a list of previously filed related cases, page or word limits, limits on the length of a filing's title, limits on exhibits, a requirement to give specific page citations for anything said to support an argument, and a requirement to explain why a new action is not barred by res judicata, collateral estoppel or law of the case.

Sanctions sit in a separate subsection. Rule 11.2(D) permits sanctions, after an opportunity for hearing, only on a finding of bad faith or a finding that the previous remedies have failed, and the court may sanction any filer or attorney whose conduct resulted in the finding.

What this means for a practice, concretely

The certification attaches at signature, so the verification has to happen before it. The order sets no evidentiary standard for that verification. As practice advice, a cite check confirming that a case exists, in the reporter cited, saying what the brief says it says, is the practical minimum a firm should be able to show.

The rule reaches pleadings, motions and other submissions by a represented party, and the certification attaches to the signature regardless of who drafted the underlying text. The order does not separately address supervisory delegation, so treat that as the practical consequence of where the signature sits rather than as a rule the order states.

The escalation path is also relevant to client counselling. A single bad citation exposes the filing to being stricken under Rule 11(C). A pattern opens the way to a Rule 11.2 finding, which produces conditions that make every subsequent filing slower. Sanctions sit at the end and require a finding of bad faith or that previous remedies have failed.

Note also that the amendments reach beyond Rule 11. Rules 8(B) and 8(E) were conformed so that denials and alternative pleadings are made subject to the obligations in Rule 11 or Rule 11.1 as applicable, which means the certification travels with pleading practice generally rather than sitting in one rule. The order describes the remaining amendments, to Rules 9.2(C), 30(B) and 87(G), as updating related cross references, and Exhibit A shows 9.2(C) conformed to the renumbered verification provision at Rule 11(D). Rule 30(B) does slightly more: it now says a violation of the deposition certification "may be addressed under Rule 11(C) or any other applicable authority", which broadens the enforcement basis rather than the duty.

What we did not verify

We opened the court's own order, Cause No. 26S-MS-8, including Exhibit A, and every quotation above is taken from that document. We did not open the trade press write ups that brought this to our attention, and nothing here rests on them.

We do not state how many Indiana filings have been stricken under the amended rules since 1 August 2026. We have not searched the docket and we have no figure. Anyone quoting an enforcement count should find it themselves.

We also do not assert that Indiana is the first or only state to adopt an authenticity certification. We have not surveyed the other states for this piece, and the claim would need that survey.

Related briefings

• Ninth Circuit AI sanctions and what filings require
• Connecticut: a prompt injection sanction in a court filing
• Delaware Chancery: a Rule 11 show cause order over generative AI
• AI court rules, by jurisdiction
• AI Regulation News hub