Biglow v. Dell Technologies: 10th Circuit Issues Formal AI Misuse Warning Against Pro Se Appellant in Employment Discrimination Appeal | Advocate Prakhar

Case at a Glance

Background

Dell Technologies hired Kevin Lee Biglow in 2012. In 2018, Dell presented employees with a Mutual Agreement to Arbitrate Claims, conditioning future long-term incentive grants on signing it. Biglow signed. Dell terminated his employment in 2019. Biglow — African American — alleged that Dell paid him less than comparable white colleagues, assigned him to lower positions, and retaliated against him for challenging the compensation system. After the district court compelled arbitration, Arbitrator James Ware (Ret.) found Biglow’s sixteen claims failed on timeliness, failure to state a claim, and reliance on statutes that provided no private right of action. Biglow moved to vacate the award; the district court denied the motion. He then appealed pro se to the Tenth Circuit.

The AI Issue

The Tenth Circuit panel — Judges Carson, Baldock, and Kelly — resolved all sixteen of Biglow’s appellate issues against him and affirmed the district court orders. But the court also wrote a separate section warning Biglow about “what appears to be his misuse of generative artificial intelligence in researching and drafting his reply brief and several motions.” The citation patterns and arguments in those filings bore hallmarks of AI generation without verification — a now-familiar pattern courts are learning to recognise.

What the Court Decided

• The Mutual Agreement to Arbitrate Claims was valid and enforceable — Biglow’s claims of duress, misrepresentation, and undue influence were rejected [arbitration agreement upheld].
• The arbitrator committed no procedural or substantive error warranting vacatur [arbitration award affirmed].
• Biglow’s reply brief and several motions showed apparent generative AI misuse [AI warning finding].
• Pro se status entitles a litigant to liberal construction of filings, but not to a lower standard of accuracy for legal citations [equal standards reaffirmed at circuit level].

“We also warn Biglow about what appears to be his misuse of generative artificial intelligence in researching and drafting his reply brief and several motions.”

— Judges Carson, Baldock, and Kelly, Biglow v. Dell Technologies, 10th Circuit, March 24, 2026

The India Angle

Indian Law Equivalent

Mandatory arbitration agreements of the type at issue in Biglow have a direct parallel in Indian employment law. Section 10 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 provides for reference of industrial disputes to arbitration. Section 8 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 governs referral of disputes to arbitration by courts. Indian employers increasingly include arbitration clauses in employment contracts — employees who sign them may find their discrimination and retaliation claims routed out of civil courts, just as Biglow’s were.

Bar Council Rules

Bar Council of India Rule 22 (no false statements to court) and Rule 33 (honest conduct in court) apply to AI-hallucinated citations. Importantly, the Tenth Circuit’s ruling is also relevant to Indian advocates who appear in arbitration proceedings: Rule 36 prohibits advocates from acting in a manner prejudicial to the administration of justice — submitting AI-fabricated citations in an arbitration proceeding is equally impermissible.

Practical Advice for Indian Advocates

• When advising clients on employment contracts containing mandatory arbitration clauses, explain that their discrimination and retaliation claims may be heard by an arbitrator, not a court — limiting public precedent and appeal rights.
• Arbitration proceedings in India are increasingly paperwork-heavy; if using AI to draft submissions for arbitration, apply the same verification standard you would for court filings — the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 imposes similar duties of candour.
• Circuit-level AI warnings like this one, while not technically binding in India, carry persuasive value — refer to them when arguing that AI verification standards apply to all levels of proceedings, including arbitration and appellate forums.

Quick Takeaways

• AI hallucination warnings now appear at the circuit court level — not just trial courts.
• Liberal construction for pro se litigants does not mean tolerance for fake citations.
• Mandatory arbitration clauses can strip discrimination claimants of their civil court access — understand them before signing.

Deep Dive: Circuit Courts Join the AI Accountability Movement

Biglow v. Dell Technologies is significant not primarily for its employment law holdings but for what it signals about the spread of AI accountability concerns to the appellate level. Until 2025, most AI hallucination rulings came from district courts and trial courts — where judges can observe filings in real time, issue show-cause orders, and conduct hearings. Circuit courts, by contrast, work primarily from written briefs and rarely have occasion to comment on brief preparation methodology.

The Tenth Circuit’s decision to include a formal AI warning — in a non-binding memorandum opinion — suggests that the hallucination problem has become pervasive enough that appellate courts are now seeing it in their own dockets. The warning is notable for its precision: the court does not simply say citations were wrong, but specifies “generative artificial intelligence in researching and drafting his reply brief and several motions.” This indicates that the panel reviewed not just the citation accuracy but the overall structure and argument patterns of Biglow’s filings — and concluded that the patterns were consistent with AI generation.

The employment law context adds a layer of complexity. Biglow’s underlying claims — racial pay discrimination, discriminatory assignment of duties — are serious civil rights allegations. The fact that his case was routed to private arbitration, and then that his appellate briefs showed evidence of AI hallucination, illustrates how pro se employment discrimination plaintiffs face compounding disadvantages: they lack counsel, they face sophisticated corporate defendants who can afford professional arbitrators, and when they try to use AI to level the playing field, they risk having their filings flagged or their arguments dismissed as inadequately supported.

For Indian advocates advising on employment disputes, the Biglow case raises questions about the growing use of mandatory arbitration clauses in Indian employment contracts. As Indian companies — particularly in the IT and financial services sectors — incorporate arbitration clauses, workers who might previously have gone to the Labour Court or High Court find themselves in a private proceeding with limited rights of appeal under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. If AI tools are increasingly used by claimants in such proceedings, Indian arbitrators will need their own frameworks for addressing hallucinated authority — a gap that neither the Arbitration and Conciliation Act nor the Bar Council Rules currently address explicitly.