Twenty-one days after Richards, Layton & Finger answered a Rule 11 show-cause order with sworn affidavits about AI-fabricated case law, another party in Leiske v. Kidd asked Vice Chancellor Lori W. Will for leave to put new material into the record alleging the firm's own account does not hold together. Court of Chancery Rule 11(c)(1) already says that absent exceptional circumstances, a law firm must be held jointly responsible for violations committed by its partners.
On August 6, 2026, another party in Leiske v. Kidd asked Vice Chancellor Lori W. Will, of the Delaware Court of Chancery, for leave to put new material into a record that already carries Richards, Layton & Finger's name under a Rule 11 show-cause order. The instrument behind that order is Court of Chancery Rule 11(c)(1), which states that "[a]bsent exceptional circumstances, a law firm must be held jointly responsible for violations committed by its partners, associates, or employees." Twenty-one days earlier, on July 16, the firm had tried to close that question with sworn affidavits from partner Richard P. Rollo and firm president Paul Heath, reported by Delaware corporate-litigation press. The new filing asks Will to reopen it.
The Sentinel first covered this fight when the order landed. On July 1, Will directed both Rollo and his firm to explain how a generative-AI tool put fabricated case law into a brief filed with her court, on a deadline of July 15. Richards Layton and Rollo answered with affidavits, reported July 16. Until August 6, that was where the story stood: a firm's apology, filed, awaiting a ruling. The posture just moved from "a firm explained itself" to "a firm's explanation is now the thing being litigated."
The order that produced those affidavits was specific about what they had to prove. RLF's affidavit had to disclose the firm's written GenAI policy in effect in December 2025 and January 2026, how that policy was communicated to Rollo, and "a showing of 'exceptional circumstances,' if any exist, demonstrating why the law firm should not be held jointly responsible for any Rule 11 violations committed by its partner." Will had already shown, in the same order, how she reads a cosmetic fix. Describing the firm's earlier correction of the offending brief, she wrote that "counsel merely deleted quotation marks while preserving the fabricated legal synthesis." The same judge who caught a quotation-mark fix in January is now the judge being asked to read a rival's claim that the firm's sworn July account has its own gaps.
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Richards Layton is Delaware's own court-facing corporate bar, the firm litigators expect to find across the table in a chancery matter, not the one answering a show-cause order. Rollo signed the brief that started this. Heath, the firm's president, put his own name on an affidavit rather than leave the firm's institutional answer to outside counsel alone. The party that moved for leave on August 6 has not accused the firm of a new hallucination. It has accused the firm's account of its own conduct of not holding together, a claim Richards Layton has not yet had to answer on the record.
Rule 11(c) requires the court to give a target "notice and a reasonable opportunity to respond" before any sanction issues, which means RLF gets to answer the new material before Will rules on anything. That is the trap built into a motion for leave rather than a motion for sanctions outright: the other side does not have to prove the firm lied. It only has to convince Will the record needs one more layer before she decides whether "exceptional circumstances" let the firm off the joint-responsibility hook Rule 11(c)(1) sets by default. No dollar figure sits anywhere on this docket. The stake is institutional: whether a Delaware Chancery firm's own sworn account of an AI failure survives a challenge filed by the other side of the same case.
Will has not ruled on the leave request. She has not set a hearing. Her July 1 order already told both sides how she decides that question: once the affidavits and any further material are in, she determines whether the show-cause resolves on the papers or moves to argument or an evidentiary hearing in Wilmington. The record she reads next includes a rival's claim that the firm's own account does not add up.
Vice Chancellor Will, last seen in these pages on July 3 ordering Richards Layton to put its GenAI policy on the public record, now has a motion asking her to test whether the firm told her the truth about it. The quotation marks came out of the brief in January. The apology went onto the docket in July. What still has to hold is the record.
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