Unverified AI-Generated Citations Violate Counsel’s Duty of Competence and Candor (and Routine In‑Forum Training Does Not Create Florida Jurisdiction)

Case: Estate of Lane Caviness v. Atlas Air, Inc. (caption lists multiple plaintiffs)
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Date: 2026-07-10
Disposition: Affirmed dismissal (no personal jurisdiction over Flight Services International; failure to state a claim against Atlas Air). Referral of counsel for AI-hallucinated citations announced in a separate order.

I. Introduction

This appeal arose from pandemic-era workplace rules imposed in the commercial aviation industry. Atlas Air, a commercial airline, and Flight Services International, LLC (a contractor-staffing company) required COVID-19 vaccination, subject to religious or medical exemptions; exempt employees were required to mask at work and undergo periodic testing.

The plaintiffs—employees who objected (principally on religious grounds) to vaccination and also criticized masking/testing as burdensome or politically motivated—asserted a wide array of claims: a Title VII hostile work environment theory; a Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act theory tied to emergency-use authorization; constitutional claims styled under § 1983 and Bivens; and Florida tort claims for invasion of privacy, negligent disclosure of medical information, and emotional distress.

The district court dismissed: (1) claims against Flight Services International for lack of personal jurisdiction in Florida; and (2) claims against Atlas Air for failure to state a claim. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed and, in a notable ethics-focused passage, condemned counsel’s repeated submission of briefs “replete with fake and hallucinated citations,” attributing the problem to uncritical outsourcing to AI tools.

II. Summary of the Opinion

• Personal jurisdiction: Florida courts could not exercise either general or specific jurisdiction over Flight Services International based merely on “annual or biannual” Miami training sessions, particularly where plaintiffs’ claims did not “arise out of or relate to” those sessions.
• Title VII hostile environment: Plaintiffs failed to plead facts supporting discriminatory intent or motive; Atlas Air’s policy provided religious exemptions and the alleged objections to masks/tests were pleaded as political/logistical rather than religious.
• FDCA emergency-use claims: No private right of action; enforcement belongs to the federal government.
• Constitutional theories: § 1983 and Bivens do not fit claims against a private company; and the court refused any “dramatic Bivens extension,” citing the Supreme Court’s instruction that expanding Bivens is disfavored.
• Florida privacy and negligence: Internal dissemination of vaccination status for work assignment purposes did not satisfy the “publicity” element required for invasion of privacy or negligent public disclosure.
• Emotional distress: COVID precautions were not “extreme and outrageous conduct” under Florida law; negligent infliction also failed for lack of the required “impact.”
• Attorney conduct (AI hallucinations): Counsel’s repeated reliance on nonexistent cases violated duties of competence and candor; referral to the Eleventh Circuit’s disciplinary committee was announced.

III. Analysis

A. Precedents Cited

1) Standards of review

• Carmouche v. Tamborlee Mgmt., Inc., 789 F.3d 1201 (11th Cir. 2015) — cited for de novo review of personal-jurisdiction dismissals and later for the “exceptional case” limitation on general jurisdiction.
• Quality Auto Painting Ctr. of Roselle, Inc. v. State Farm Indem. Co., 917 F.3d 1249 (11th Cir. 2019) (en banc) — cited for de novo review of Rule 12(b)(6) dismissals.

2) Personal jurisdiction framework (general vs. specific)

• United Techs. Corp. v. Mazer, 556 F.3d 1260 (11th Cir. 2009) — the two-step inquiry: comply with the state long-arm statute and the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause.
• Jekyll Island-State Park Auth. v. Polygroup Macau Ltd., 140 F.4th 1304 (11th Cir. 2025) — plaintiff bears the burden to make a prima facie showing of personal jurisdiction.
• Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915 (2011), quoting Int'l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945) — general jurisdiction requires “continuous and systematic” affiliations rendering the defendant “essentially at home.”
• Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117 (2014) — incorporation and principal place of business are the “paradigm bases” for general jurisdiction; other bases are “exceptional.”
• Ford Motor Co. v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 592 U.S. 351 (2021) — specific jurisdiction requires an “affiliation between the forum and the underlying controversy,” i.e., the claim must “arise out of or relate to” forum contacts.
• Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235 (1958) — purposeful availment requirement.
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Ct. of Cal., San Francisco Cnty., 582 U.S. 255 (2017) — reinforces the required connection between the forum and the specific controversy.
• Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408 (1984) — “brief presence” in the forum (there, for training) is not enough for general jurisdiction.
• Butler v. Sukhoi Co., 579 F.3d 1307 (11th Cir. 2009) — without a prima facie jurisdictional showing, plaintiffs are not entitled to jurisdictional discovery.

These authorities drove the court’s holding that sending employees to periodic Miami training—without claims tied to those trainings—cannot create either general jurisdiction (“at home” in Florida) or specific jurisdiction (no “arise out of or relate to” nexus).

3) Title VII hostile work environment and intent

• Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Tr., 487 U.S. 977 (1988) — for the Title VII theory advanced, plaintiff must show discriminatory intent or motive.
• Miller v. Donald, 541 F.3d 1091 (11th Cir. 2008) — conclusory allegations can be rejected as “wildly implausible.”

The court treated the pleaded facts (religious exemptions granted; masking/testing imposed neutrally on exempt employees) as inconsistent with an inference of religious animus, and it read plaintiffs’ objections to masking/testing as political/logistical rather than religious—undermining discriminatory motive.

4) FDCA private enforcement bar

• Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs' Legal Comm., 531 U.S. 341 (2001) — cited alongside 21 U.S.C. § 337(a) to confirm that FDCA enforcement is reserved to the federal government.

5) Constitutional claims and the narrowing of Bivens

• Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971) — the foundational implied-damages remedy against federal officers.
• Goldey v. Fields, 606 U.S. 942 (2025) — reiterates that recognizing a Bivens cause of action is “a disfavored judicial activity.”
• Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120 (2017) — cited to justify rejecting expansion of Bivens into new contexts.

Even entertaining plaintiffs’ suggestion that Atlas Air could be treated as a state actor due to compliance with President Biden’s Executive Order 14042, § 2, 86 Fed. Reg. 50985 (Sept. 9, 2021), the panel refused to extend Bivens—consistent with the Supreme Court’s modern reluctance to expand implied constitutional damages remedies.

6) Florida privacy/publicity requirements and internal disclosures

• Steele v. Offshore Shipbuilding, Inc., 867 F.2d 1311 (11th Cir. 1989) — invasion of privacy (absent physical invasion) requires publication to the public or many persons.
• Williams v. City of Minneola, 575 So. 2d 683 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1991) — same “publicity” principle in Florida law.
• Hunstein v. Preferred Collection & Mgmt. Servs., Inc., 48 F.4th 1236 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc) — defines “publicity” as communication to the public at large (or so many persons as to make it substantially certain to become public knowledge) and rejects the notion that disclosure to an intermediary alone satisfies publicity.

The panel used Hunstein as the key analogy: even disclosure to a third-party intermediary is not necessarily “publicity,” and disclosure within a company for operational reasons (shift assignments) is even further from “publicity.”

7) Emotional distress under Florida law

• E. Airlines, Inc. v. King, 557 So. 2d 574 (Fla. 1990) — sets the “extreme and outrageous conduct” threshold for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
• Fernander v. Bonis, 947 So. 2d 584 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2007) — cited for Florida’s “impact” requirement for negligent infliction of emotional distress (generally requiring emotional stress to flow from injuries sustained in an impact).

8) AI, competence, and candor

• Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., 2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary — invoked for the warning that AI use is risky (“Always a bad idea”) and requires “caution and humility.”
• Model Rules of Pro. Conduct r. 1.1 (A.B.A. 1983) — competence requires “legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation.”
• A.B.A. Comm. on Ethics & Pro. Resp., Formal Op. 512 (2024) — cited for the proposition that outsourcing legal work to AI without adequate oversight is inconsistent with professional obligations.

While not a merits holding, the opinion’s ethics discussion functions as a pointed appellate warning: AI can be used, but only with meaningful human verification; submitting hallucinated authorities breaches the duty of competence and undermines the court’s adjudicative process.

B. Legal Reasoning

1) Personal jurisdiction over Flight Services International

The court applied the standard general/specific jurisdiction dichotomy:

• No general jurisdiction: Flight Services International was incorporated and headquartered in Texas. Under Daimler AG v. Bauman, that typically ends the inquiry. Plaintiffs’ only Florida contact—training sessions in Miami—resembled the “brief presence” deemed insufficient in Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall.
• No specific jurisdiction: Plaintiffs’ claims concerned vaccination/masking/testing workplace rules, but they did not plead that the dispute was tied to Florida training sessions (no allegation that anyone attended the sessions during the mandate, was barred from attending, or suffered the complained-of harm in Florida). Under Ford Motor Co. v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., the claims did not “arise out of or relate to” the forum contact.
• No jurisdictional discovery: Having failed to make a prima facie showing, plaintiffs were not entitled to discovery under Butler v. Sukhoi Co..

2) Failure to state a claim against Atlas Air

a) Title VII hostile work environment

The decisive defect was the absence of pleaded facts supporting discriminatory intent or motive (Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Tr.). The complaint itself alleged that Atlas Air granted religious exemptions and substituted masking/testing. Plaintiffs attacked masks as “political symbols” and testing as a “substantial burden,” but did not plead that these were burdens on religious exercise (as opposed to political or logistical complaints), nor that religious-exempt employees were treated worse than medical-exempt employees. On that record, the allegation of religious hostility was deemed conclusory and “wildly implausible” under Miller v. Donald.

b) FDCA / emergency use authorization

Even if the vaccination policy implicated 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3, the court held plaintiffs could not sue to enforce it because 21 U.S.C. § 337(a) reserves enforcement to the federal government, and Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs' Legal Comm. confirms the absence of a private right of action.

c) Constitutional claims (§ 1983 and Bivens)

The panel treated the claims as structurally mismatched: § 1983 addresses state officials; Bivens addresses federal officers. Atlas Air is a private company. The court also rejected any expansion of Bivens, citing Goldey v. Fields and Ziglar v. Abbasi, even assuming arguendo some quasi-governmental role due to Executive Order 14042 compliance.

d) Florida torts: privacy, negligent disclosure, and emotional distress

• Invasion of privacy / negligent public disclosure: Under Steele v. Offshore Shipbuilding, Inc., Williams v. City of Minneola, and the en banc articulation in Hunstein v. Preferred Collection & Mgmt. Servs., Inc., “publicity” requires disclosure to the public at large (or so many persons that public knowledge is substantially certain). Internal circulation of vaccination status to administer flight assignments and COVID protocols did not meet that standard.
• Intentional infliction of emotional distress: Under E. Airlines, Inc. v. King, employer precautions to mitigate COVID spread—even if disliked—were not “atrocious” and “utterly intolerable.”
• Negligent infliction of emotional distress: Plaintiffs conceded Florida’s “impact” requirement (per Fernander v. Bonis) and did not satisfy it.

3) The court’s ethics holding-in-principle on AI hallucinations

The opinion’s final section identifies a distinct institutional harm: appellate courts rely on counsels’ accurate representations of the law. The court condemned counsel’s repeated submission of hallucinated case citations, especially after warning, and deemed “completely outsourcing” legal work to AI inconsistent with Rule 1.1 competence and the lawyer’s role as an officer of the court. It announced referral under Eleventh Circuit Rules (Addendum 8, r. 2(C)).

C. Impact

1) Personal jurisdiction: training contacts are not enough without claim nexus

The decision reinforces a tightening trend in personal-jurisdiction doctrine: sporadic in-forum training activity is ordinarily insufficient for general jurisdiction and—absent a direct connection between training and the asserted injury—will not supply specific jurisdiction. For staffing and aviation contractors operating nationally, this underscores that plaintiffs must plead where the operative events occurred and how those events tie to forum contacts.

2) COVID-policy employment suits: pleading must connect “religion” to the complained-of conduct

The panel’s Title VII analysis signals skepticism where plaintiffs (i) receive religious exemptions, yet (ii) reframe neutral alternative safety measures (masking/testing) as “hostility” without pleading facts showing those measures burden religious practice or reflect religious animus. Future plaintiffs will likely need clearer allegations of disparate treatment, targeted religious hostility, or a well-pleaded link between religious doctrine and the specific objection (masking/testing), not merely opposition to the policy’s efficacy or politics.

3) Privacy claims about vaccination status: “publicity” remains a high bar

By analogizing to Hunstein v. Preferred Collection & Mgmt. Servs., Inc., the opinion suggests Florida privacy torts will rarely fit purely internal employer disclosures made for operational purposes, even when the information is medical in nature. Plaintiffs attempting to proceed on “public disclosure” theories will need facts showing broad dissemination beyond the employer’s legitimate need-to-know channels.

4) Bivens remains effectively closed to new contexts (especially against private entities)

The refusal to extend Bivens—even in a case touching federal executive policy—tracks the Supreme Court’s restrictive approach and cautions litigants that constitutional damages claims against private contractors face steep doctrinal barriers.

5) Professional responsibility and AI: a public appellate warning with disciplinary consequences

The opinion’s most forward-looking impact is its explicit linkage between AI hallucinations and lawyer discipline: the court framed unverified AI-generated citations as a competence and candor failure and announced referral for attorney misconduct. In practice, this encourages (and may soon effectively require) litigators to implement verifiable “human-in-the-loop” citation checking and recordkeeping before filing.

IV. Complex Concepts Simplified

• General jurisdiction: A court can hear any claim against a company only where the company is “at home” (usually its state of incorporation or principal place of business). Occasional training trips rarely qualify.
• Specific jurisdiction: A court can hear only claims connected to the defendant’s forum contacts. The contact must relate to the injury sued upon (“arise out of or relate to”).
• “Purposeful availment”: The defendant must have deliberately engaged with the forum state—not accidentally or through someone else’s unilateral actions.
• Title VII discriminatory intent: For the hostile-environment theory advanced here, it is not enough that a policy is disliked; plaintiffs must plausibly allege it was imposed (or applied) because of religion.
• No private right of action (FDCA): Some federal statutes are enforced only by the government; private plaintiffs cannot sue under them unless Congress clearly authorizes it.
• § 1983 vs. Bivens: § 1983 is the usual damages vehicle for constitutional violations by state actors; Bivens is the federal analogue for federal officers, but courts are reluctant to expand it.
• “Publicity” in privacy torts: Telling a few people inside a company is generally not the same as telling the public; the law requires wide dissemination or near-certain public spread.
• AI “hallucinated citations”: Some AI tools generate plausible-looking but nonexistent case citations; filing them is treated as an attorney failure, not a technology excuse.

V. Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit’s decision is a straightforward affirmance on jurisdiction and pleading—but with an unusually emphatic addendum on professional responsibility. On the merits, the court held: (1) periodic in-forum training does not establish Florida jurisdiction without a claim-specific nexus; (2) the pleaded facts did not support religious animus under Title VII; (3) the FDCA provides no private enforcement route; (4) constitutional damages theories did not fit a private employer and would require an impermissible Bivens expansion; and (5) internal vaccination-status communications did not satisfy Florida’s “publicity” requirement for privacy torts, nor did COVID precautions constitute “outrageous” conduct for emotional distress.

The broader significance lies in the court’s clear institutional directive: AI may assist legal work, but it cannot replace counsel’s duty to verify the law. Submitting hallucinated authorities is framed as a serious breach of competence and candor, warranting disciplinary referral—an admonition likely to influence litigation practices across the circuit.