Sharion Aycock
How Judge Aycock rules, drawn from 6 signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
How Judge Aycock decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
When an attorney claims ignorance that AI tools can fabricate citations, the judge treats that claim skeptically and looks for corroborating conduct (e.g. continued unverified AI use in other cases after being caught) before crediting an apology as sincere.
“For these reasons, the Court disbelieves Wilson's claim of ignorance of the risks associated with using AI in the legal context.”
A party cannot rely on a contract's warranty provision for an express-warranty claim while challenging that same contract's validity to avoid an implied-warranty disclaimer.
“The City cannot rely on the contract for one claim and challenge its validity in support of another claim.”
Evidence that a contracting party may have contributed to the failure of a payment condition, including by favoring a new priority customer, can create jury questions on contract and good-faith theories.
“Overall, there exists a jury question of whether Hey Dude diverted the overlapping inventory from RMS’ customers in order to satisfy its new priority customer—Academy.”
Procedural preferences
She distinguishes sharply between the attorney who drafted a tainted filing (treated as bearing the highest responsibility, especially if using AI without a firm policy permitting it) and local counsel who merely signed without independently checking citations (treated as negligent but not necessarily in bad faith, and given more credit for self-reporting to the bar).
“the Court finds that he too violated his duties as a sponsoring resident attorney pursuant to this Court's Local Rules... the Court has no reason to believe that he acted in bad faith.”
Cautions
The judge does not require proof that AI was actually used to sanction fabricated citations: an attorney's denial of AI use is not a defense if the citations do not exist or misstate the case's holding.
“the Court need not make any finding as to whether Martin actually used AI to generate the fictitious case citations and fake quotes or to draft any portion of the filings to make a determination on the present issue.”
A firm's adoption of an AI-use policy does not mitigate repeated citation failures when its supervisors do not enforce the policy or determine the full extent of the affected filings.
“the Firm was on notice of Ms. Watson's unverified AI usage in March of 2025, and its failure to adequately address the issue has resulted in a flood of tainted filings throughout this State.”
Treats a motion to alter or amend judgment as an extraordinary remedy and requires new evidence, a manifest error, or an argument that could not previously have been raised.
“Harrison’s Motion [49] fails to present newly discovered evidence, identify manifest errors of law or fact, or raise arguments that could not have been raised prior to judgment.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“citing nonexistent case law or misrepresenting the holdings of a case is making a false statement to a court. It does not matter if generative AI told you so.”
“The Court finds that, through their own admissions, all four attorneys failed to verify the legal authorities cited in their respective filings in violation of Rule 11 ... Sanctions ... are warranted as to them all.”
“the Court first finds it appropriate to disqualify all three attorneys and their respective firms from further representation of Billups in this case.”
“Ms. Watson and Mr. Watson's respective Motions to Withdraw as Counsel [76, 78] are DENIED AS MOOT.”
“For the reasons set forth above, Evoqua’s Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim [101] is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. The City’s breach of implied warranty of merchantability and breach of implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose claims are DISMISSED with prejudice. The City may proceed with its negligence claim.”
“For the reasons set forth above, Hey Dude’s Motion for Summary Judgment [73] is GRANED IN PART, DENIED IN PART, and HELD IN ABEYANANCE IN PART.”
“Hey Dude’s Partial Motion to Dismiss [46] is denied as MOOT.”
“For the reasons set forth above, Harrison’s Motion to Alter or Amend Judgment [49] is DENIED. This CASE remains CLOSED.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
- As a senior judge since April 2025, she continues to carry an active caseload including Social Security appeals, civil-rights and employment suits, prisoner habeas petitions, insurance and construction-contract disputes, and general civil litigation across the Aberdeen, Greenville, and Oxford divisions.
- The sample now spans both her recent sanctions practice and a broad cross-section of ordinary dispositive-motion rulings.
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