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Correction, October 1, 2026. This article was checked against the official text and revised: The revisions clarify the independent grounds for dismissal, the relief sought, the expert descriptions, the citation process, the scope of the order and the reason for rejecting the clarification, and remove unsupported generalizations, appeal claims and the unverified comparator.
Court Excludes Expert Report Over Hallucinated Citations and Grants Summary Judgment
The court excluded an expert on psychological impacts as unreliable and found that no remaining expert in the record addressed how the supplements could have caused medical damages. It then granted summary judgment because the plaintiff could not prove damages caused by the defendants.
Disposition: This district court order resolves the motions and remaining claims in this case.
Practical relevance: Experts and lawyers preparing expert reports.
Issue date: Order signed and filed 2026-08-18 (signature block reads "Dated this 18th day of August, 2026"; the ECF header on all 19 pages reads "Filed 08/18/26"). The related sanctions order against plaintiff's counsel is Dkt. 265.
What changed: The court held that hallucinated citations confined to withdrawn portions of the report still made the whole report unreliable under Daubert. It then granted summary judgment because the plaintiff could not prove damages caused by the defendants.
Analysis: The citations at issue sat in parts of the report the plaintiff had already withdrawn. The court held they still contaminated the whole report. Withdrawal did not quarantine the problem.
Primary sources: Order Granting Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment, Dkt. 269 (PDF, 19 pp.)
- Instrument (EN)
- Order Granting Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment, Dkt. 269
- Authority
- United States District Court, Western District of Washington at Tacoma; Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright
- Jurisdiction
- United States, federal, W.D. Wash. (Tacoma)
- Case
- Joann LeDoux v. Outliers, Inc. (d/b/a Thesis, Thesis Nootropics, Find My Formula, and Formula) et al., No. 3:24-cv-05808-TMC
- Status
- Entered. Two Daubert motions granted, summary judgment granted, remaining claims dismissed with prejudice and without leave to amend.
- Bindingness
- This district court order resolves the motions and remaining claims in this case.
- Issue date / next deadline
- 2026-08-18. The order sets no compliance deadline. The order does not state an appeal deadline.
- Related order
- Dkt. 265, sua sponte sanctions against plaintiff's attorney for AI-generated false citations (we did not open it)
- Primary source
- https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/2902/Ledoux_v._Outliers_USA_August_2026.pdf
What the order actually does
The court granted three motions in one document. It excluded a regulatory expert, Ms. Evelyn Cadman (Dkt. 206), because her opinion offered legal conclusions rather than specialized knowledge. It excluded Dr. Gabriel Holguin, an expert on psychological impacts (Dkt. 208), on reliability grounds. It then granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment (Dkt. 207) and dismissed the plaintiff's remaining claims "WITH PREJUDICE and without leave to amend."
The plaintiff, an Army nurse, alleged that nootropic supplement kits were adulterated with amphetamines and undisclosed ingredients. A January 2026 partial summary judgment order had already knocked out her primary theory, that the supplements caused a positive drug screening. The remaining claims sought medical damages, purchase-price recovery and injunctive relief. All failed.
The medical damages claim failed for want of admissible expert causation evidence. The court also found the evidence insufficient even if expert testimony were not required. Injunctive relief was unavailable because the plaintiff had stopped using the products and had not indicated any intention to use them again. The purchase price claim was mooted by an unconditional tender of $13,000, which exceeded the $12,708.78 the defendants argued was the maximum allowable damages for those claims, based on the $632 the plaintiff spent on the products.
The citation table, and how it reached two experts
The court had previously addressed AI-generated false citations in other expert reports in this case. The court had already issued sua sponte sanctions against plaintiff's attorney, Ms. Jocelyn Stewart, at Dkt. 265, for what this order describes as "generating numerous false citations with artificial intelligence and submitting them to the Court without verification."
Quoting its own sanctions order, the court records that the plaintiff admitted "she used Claude or ChatGPT to 'generate a formatted citation table' for academic articles and 'provided the same AI-generated citation table to both experts as an appendix, and neither expert caught the errors in the citation data before signing their reports.'"
The order says an AI-generated citation table was supplied as an appendix to Mr. James Kababick and Dr. Ronald Shippee. Neither caught the citation errors before signing.
The court noted that counsel was not asked to provide information about Dr. Holguin's citations, but found the errors similar to those in the other expert reports.
Why withdrawing the tainted pages did not save the report
The plaintiff had already withdrawn three of the four opinions in Dr. Holguin's report, and the hallucinated citations lived in the withdrawn portions. The surviving fourth opinion, on a symptom course consistent with stimulant withdrawal, carried none of them.
The court excluded the report anyway. In its words: "Thus, although these errors occur only in the withdrawn portions of Dr. Holguin's opinion, they 'undermine[] the overall credibility' of the report." It then stated the holding in one line: "The Court finds that the hallucinated citations undermine Dr. Holguin's entire report and that the report is not reliable under Daubert."
The reasoning is squarely Rule 702. The court found that counsel's level of involvement in drafting the reliance list with AI, combined with "Dr. Holguin's lack of diligence in verifying the sources that he represented were the basis for his opinion," prevented the plaintiff from carrying her burden under Fed. R. Evid. 702(b) through (d), the sufficient-facts, reliable-methods and reliable-application prongs.
The court quoted Kohls v. Ellison for the proposition that the hallucinated citations "shatter[] his credibility with this Court," and Concord Music Group, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC for the overall credibility point.
The court excluded the report and separately granted summary judgment
At Section IV.C.1, the court finds that the plaintiff's medical damages theory is "medically complex" under Washington law and "would require expert testimony at trial," and that "no remaining expert in the record discusses how the supplements could have caused withdrawal symptoms or any other medical damages."
The court also addressed causation independently of exclusion. Even considering Dr. Holguin's opinion despite its unreliability, it "does not speak directly to medical causation," and, as the defendants noted and the court accepted, he "indisputably never opined on more-likely-than-not causation." The medical damages claim therefore failed independently of exclusion.
The court held that each remaining claim failed because the plaintiff could not prove that she suffered any damages as a result of the defendants' conduct.
On this record, the court found that counsel's AI-assisted drafting of the reliance list and Dr. Holguin's lack of diligence in verifying his sources left the opinion without a reliable basis, and that the hallucinated citations undermined his entire report.
Scope of the order
This district court order resolves the motions and remaining claims in this case.
The court found that the hallucinated citations undermined Dr. Holguin's entire report and that the report was not reliable under Daubert.
The order does not impose a categorical ban on AI-assisted citation work. The subsequent appeal status was not checked.
What a report preparer should change on Monday
Practical recommendation: Experts and counsel should verify citations and the sources supporting an expert opinion.
An AI-generated citation table was supplied to two experts, neither of whom caught its errors before signing.
The order does not impose sanctions on Dr. Holguin. Ms. Cadman and Dr. Holguin submitted declarations attempting to clarify their reports. The court declined to consider the late clarifications as part of the experts' opinions, because the plaintiff did not explain why they should be considered more than four months after the expert disclosure deadline, but it did not rely on the withdrawn portions.
What we did not verify
What we opened: the full 19-page order, Dkt. 269, filed 08/18/26 in Case No. 3:24-cv-05808-TMC, in PDF, from the link in the primary sources above. The substantive quotations match the order, with quotation marks normalized. The date is taken from the signature block and the ECF header.
What we did NOT open: the sanctions order against plaintiff's counsel (Dkt. 265), the expert reports themselves (Dkts. 206-1, 208-1, 208-2), the motions (Dkts. 206, 207, 208), the January 2026 partial summary judgment order (Dkt. 202), the docket, and any subsequent judgment or notice of appeal.
What we refuse to claim: that this reflects a trend, a majority position, or an emerging federal standard; that other courts will follow it; that any specific number of citations was hallucinated, since the order gives no count; that Dr. Holguin or the other experts used AI themselves, which the order does not say; that the case is over, since we did not check for an appeal; and that AI-assisted citation work is per se disqualifying, which this order does not hold.
A Washington federal judge found that hallucinated citations undermined Dr. Holguin's entire report, even though the errors occurred only in withdrawn portions of his opinion. Counsel was not asked about these citations, but the court found the errors similar to those in other expert reports in the case. The court then granted summary judgment because the plaintiff could not prove damages caused by the defendants. This district court order resolves the motions and remaining claims in this case.
Source File
https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/2902/Ledoux_v._Outliers_USA_August_2026.pdf
Open the Dkt. 269 PDF and confirm three things: at page 12, the sentence beginning "The Court finds that the hallucinated citations undermine"; at pages 3 and 12, the quoted admission about a "formatted citation table" provided to both experts as an appendix; and at page 19, the signature block dated the 18th day of August, 2026, matching the "Filed 08/18/26" header on every page.
The Court finds that the hallucinated citations undermine Dr. Holguin's entire report and that the report is not reliable under Daubert. ยท Order Granting Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment, Dkt. 269, W.D. Wash., 2026-08-18
FAQ
Did the expert use AI to write the report?
The order does not say that. It says the hallucinated citations "appear generated by artificial intelligence" and records that in other expert reports in the same case, plaintiff's counsel produced an AI citation table and supplied it to two experts as an appendix. The court faulted Dr. Holguin for failing to verify sources he represented as the basis of his opinion.
The bad citations were in withdrawn sections. Why did that not fix it?
The court held they contaminated the report anyway: "although these errors occur only in the withdrawn portions of Dr. Holguin's opinion, they 'undermine[] the overall credibility' of the report." It found the report not reliable under Daubert in its entirety.
Is this now the federal standard for AI citations in expert reports?
No. This district court order resolves the motions and remaining claims in this case.
Was the exclusion the only reason the plaintiff lost?
No. The court held that each remaining claim failed because the plaintiff could not prove damages caused by the defendants. The court also held that even if it considered Dr. Holguin's opinion, it would not establish causation because, as the defendants noted, he "indisputably never opined on more-likely-than-not causation," and separately that an unconditional tender of $13,000 mooted the purchase-price damages.
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