(Correction: This article was updated at 9:45 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 9, to correct reference to where state law allows the attorney general to direct proceeds of settlements and to adjust its headline. NonDoc regrets the error. Separately, readers should note that the following article contains references to sexual abuse of children and violence against animals.)
During the holiday season, courts have a tendency to try to clean their plates.
Several appellate decisions affecting Oklahoma cases have already dropped in recent weeks, and more could be on the way.
In the following legal roundup, you can peruse notable and newsworthy developments in the worlds of civil and criminal litigation. Below, you’ll find information about a TV station’s defamation case, a new settlement with a controversial pharmacy benefit manager, and a trio of 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decisions.
Those appellate cases involve an Indian law technicality, the fabrication of legal citations by artificial intelligence, and — arguably — a lack of emotional intelligence in the case of officers in Locus Grove.
Drummond strikes $5 million settlement with CVS Caremark
The Oklahoma Office of the Attorney General reached a $5 million settlement with CVS Caremark, the pharmacy benefit management subsidiary of pharmacy giant CVS.
A growing and controversial sub-industry, pharmacy benefit managers — or PBMs — act as middlemen between pharmacies, insurance companies and drug manufacturers, and they determine how much pharmacies get paid for distributing prescription drugs. In January 2025, Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed an action in administrative court accusing CVS Caremark of paying pharmacies less than what medications actually cost.
Under the settlement agreement announced Dec. 8, CVS Caremark is required to pay $5.08 million to the Attorney General’s Office, $4.96 million of which “payments to be made to the pharmacies identified in Exhibits A-C in a manner to be determined by the attorney general.”
“When your local pharmacy is paid pennies on the dollar, or even loses money filling your prescription, it can’t keep its doors open,” Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a press release. “This settlement puts millions of dollars back into Oklahoma pharmacies so they can continue serving their communities. We’re protecting your access to the prescriptions you need and the pharmacists you trust, especially in small towns where the local pharmacy is often the only option for healthcare.”
The settlement agreement released by Drummond’s office did not include the referenced exhibits listing pharmacies eligible for payment, although the press release said the settlement money will repay pharmacies for 68,099 prescriptions filed between January 2024 and August 2025. The administrative action was filed with the Office of Administrative Hearings within the Attorney General’s Office.
Drummond’s settlement with CVS Caremark specifies he will choose where the money is paid, and Title 74, Section 18bA12 of state statute requires that “any monies, any property or other item of value” negotiated in settlement of any “action” where the attorney general represents the state be “paid first to the State Treasury.”
In 2019, the Oklahoma Legislature created that statute to emphasize what they considered to be an existing requirement for the attorney general to deposit all settlement proceeds with the State Treasury instead of directing their allocation. Lawmakers added the explicit statutory requirement after then-Attorney General Mike Hunter irritated legislative leaders by designating the recipients of funds from his settlement with Purdue Pharma.
However, in 2024, the Oklahoma Legislature subsequently created Title 36, Section 6966.2 to establish the Attorney General’s Pharmacy Benefits Manager Enforcement Revolving Fund within the State Treasury. That provision says monies deposited into it “may be budgeted and expended by the attorney general,” which Drummond said he will do with the CVS Caremark settlement funds.
According to Drummond’s press release, CVS Caremark denies wrongdoing and “agreed to the settlement to avoid the costs and uncertainties of continued wrongdoing.” The PBM also agreed to review its internal policies.
Drummond’s office encouraged pharmacies that believe they were reimbursed for prescription drugs below cost to file complaints with the state’s PBM Compliance and Enforcement Unit.
Drummond intervenes in case alleging State Farm ‘scheme’
On Dec. 4, Drummond filed a motion to intervene in an Oklahoma County bad faith case against State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, which alleges that the Illinois-based insurance giant orchestrated “a coordinated program to limit roof-related insurance payouts by denying or reducing valid hail and wind claims.”
“Oklahomans are paying rising homeowners insurance premiums yet receiving less protection in return, as State Farm simultaneously pursues additional rate increases while allegedly escalating its claim denials and underpayment practices,” Drummond said in the motion. “Oklahomans can weather inflation and Oklahoma storms, but they cannot withstand a system in which they are charged more while effectively insured less. Inflation and weather do not explain, let alone justify, the widening gap between what Oklahomans pay and what they receive.”
Oklahoma Watch’s J.C. Hallman has reported on the topic of homeowners insurance rates extensively, and he covered a Nov. 7 pretrial hearing that featured harsh criticism of the company from plaintiff attorneys Reggie Whitten and Mike Burrage.
“I’m just offended by State Farm,” Whitten said while arguing for documents to be produced during discovery. “They are saving billions of dollars, nationwide. Those documents need to be shown to the world. Look these folks in the face and tell them about it. (…) Don’t just tell them you’re a good neighbor.”
Drummond’s intervention in the case on behalf of the state sides him with Whitten and Burrage, whose work with former Attorney General Mike Hunter he previously criticized.
Nonetheless, Drummond said in his motion that Oklahomans deserve answers to the rising premiums they see on their bills.
“Such a scheme shocks the conscience. Oklahomans are paying rising homeowners insurance premiums yet receiving less protection in return, as State Farm simultaneously pursues additional rate increases while allegedly escalating its claim denials and underpayment practices,” Drummond wrote. “Oklahomans can weather inflation and Oklahoma storms, but they cannot withstand a system in which they are charged more while effectively insured less. Inflation and weather do not explain, let alone justify, the widening gap between what Oklahomans pay and what they receive.”
Nexstar loses appeal in defamation case over wrong mugshot
After the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the denial of a motion to dismiss filed by attorneys for Nexstar Media Group in a civil suit brought by Christopher Renyles McCleary, he will have a chance to continue his defamation suit about the erroneous use of his photo.
On Oct. 4 and 5, 2021, the OKC-based TV station KFOR presented a news segment about a federal sex trafficking prosecution in Texas where one of the defendants was named Christopher Lynn McCleary. In the segment prepared by producer Cristi Jill Wolf, KFOR used a photograph of Christopher Renyles McCleary that Wolf or an assistant had retrieved from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections’ website.
After the incorrect photo appeared on TV, Christopher Renyles McCleary filed suit against Nexstar, and Oklahoma County District Judge Richard Ogden initially dismissed the case before discovery, finding McCleary had failed to establish Nexstar had acted negligently. The Court of Civil Appeals reversed that decision and remanded the case to allow discovery on Nexstar’s degree of fault.
Wolf then said in a deposition that she learned of the story from a Texas-based news station’s reporting — which did not include a photograph of McCleary — but could not remember the exact source. (A segment from KXII could have been the story she had seen. Months earlier, reporting from The Ada News also did not include McCleary’s photo.)
She also “testified she did not recall verifying McCleary’s identity by reviewing the court documents in the Texas case or checking any other sources other than pulling his photo from the ODOC website,” according to the court’s summary of her deposition. (Wolf also said she had never used PACER, the website for accessing federal court documents, but KFOR “absolutely” employed someone who could use PACER.)
After discovery and Wolf’s deposition, Nexstar again moved to dismiss the case, but Ogden denied that motion. Nexstar appealed, and their attorneys argued McCleary should have been required to present expert testimony to support his negligence claim.
Citing persuasive precedent from Texas, the appellate court disagreed by finding the Oklahoma Citizens’ Participation Act did not require expert testimony in McCleary’s case, or in the alternative that the testimony of Nexstar’s own experts provided enough evidence they were negligent.
“We find [Wolf]’s testimony, along with McCleary’s other evidence, sufficient to meet his burden to produce ‘clear and specific’ evidence to support his claim, whether expert testimony is required or not,” Vice Chief Judge Stacie Hixon wrote for the three-judge panel. “Nexstar is free to contend that it acted with ordinary care. [Wolf]’s testimony contradicts these assertions and supports McCleary’s claim.”
The court also found that McCleary had made enough of a showing of “actual malice” to allow his punitive damages to survive a motion to dismiss.
“From the totality of the evidence presented, we conclude McCleary presented clear and specific evidence from which a reasonable person could conclude that [Wolf] had no reasonable basis to conclude McCleary was the defendant charged in the Texas case, and clear and specific evidence to support prima facie actual malice based on high degree of awareness of the probable falsity of the report and/or obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the report,” Hixon wrote.
The opinion is a published decision of the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals, but not a binding precedent under an order of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
10th Circuit dismisses appeal in Del City case over AI court filings, sanctions pro se litigant
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a race and age discrimination lawsuit brought by former City of Del City employee Rashonna Moore and issued sanctions requiring her to disclose her use of generative artificial intelligence in any future filings with the court.
Moore filed her lawsuit against Del City in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, and the court dismissed her claims for violating a 300-day statute of limitations. She appealed to the 10th Circuit while representing herself and allegedly used generative AI to assist with writing her brief.
The per curium opinion from Judges Timothy Tymkovich, Bobby Baldock and Gregory Phillips admonished the AI use for fabricating 11 case citations and misinterpreting two cases.
“In her appellate brief, Moore cited 11 cases we could not locate on Westlaw and two others that did not reasonably stand for the propositions for which she cited them,” the judges wrote. “We suspected that the 11 case citations were entirely created by a GenAI tool. We also suspect that the two misattributions were also produced by the use of a GenAI tool. Such fabricated cases and misattributions are often referred to as ‘AI hallucinations.'”
After the court suspected Moore of using AI to write filings, they ordered her to submit the 11 cases to the court, identify any AI tools she used, and show why she should not be sanctioned. In her response, Moore did not confirm or deny the use of AI in writing her files, but she did include another hallucinated citation.
“The presence of the fabricated Cohen case citation indicates that Moore turned to a GenAI tool for assistance in drafting her response to our show cause order,” the court said. “Although there is nothing inherently problematic with the use of GenAI in the practice of law, its careless use can waste both judicial resources and the opposing party’s time and money, and it can damage the credibility of the legal system. The principal misuse here is Moore’s failure to verify that the 11 case citations in her appellate brief and the Cohen citation in her response to our show-cause order refer to cases that actually exist. The lesser misuse is her failure to confirm that two actual cases cited in her filings reasonably support the propositions for which she cited them.”
After affirming the lower court, the 10th Circuit sanctioned Moore, requiring her to “under penalty of perjury, state whether she used a GenAI tool and verify that all case citations accurately refer to actual, existing cases.”
The court ended with a warning on the use of AI in court filings.
“Finally, we warn future litigants, pro se and those represented by counsel alike, that outright dismissal — without a merits ruling — may be an appropriate sanction in a given case, as may monetary or other sanctions, such as an award of the opposing party’s attorney fees incurred in responding to fabricated case citations or clear misrepresentations of law spawned by the unscrutinized use of GenAI,” the judges wrote.
10th circuit rejects lawsuit against officers for botched dog execution
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by two dog owners against the City of Locust Grove, Mayor Jason Williams and two Locust Grove Police Department officers for alleged Fourth Amendment violations, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and conversion.
Deanna Shelton and Chloe Jennings’ dogs bred in 2021, resulting in the birth of puppies Sancho and Zeke that August. Both new dogs were kept by Shelton with Jennings’ consent, according to the court’s recitation of facts.
On Aug. 11, 2022, Sancho and Zeke were in Shelton’s front yard, and Locust Grove Police Department officers Clay Hall and Brett Russell approached Jennings to ask if they could “take the dogs to the pound” for not being in a fenced yard. Jennings consented, but requested the dogs be taken to “the pound in Pryor,” and Hall agreed to take both dogs to Pryor.
Shortly afterward, Shelton returned home, and Hall and Russell told her she would be ticketed “for her dogs being ‘at large.’” Shelton then called Locust Grove Mayor Jason Williams.
After Williams arrived, Shelton explained she could not pay the fine, and the officers offered her a choice between receiving a ticket for the dogs being at large or “claim that Sancho and Zeke were strays and abandon them to the officers.” Believing the dogs would be held in the pound in Pryor, Shelton chose to abandon the dogs.
Sancho and Zeke were then loaded into the animal control truck, and Williams ordered them both “put down, or euthanized.” Hall took both dogs to the “city’s property on North Wyandotte” and shot them.
On Aug. 20, Sancho returned to Shelton’s home with “a wound at the top of his skull, an injured right eye, a swollen face, and covered in mud.” Shelton called the police to report her dog’s return with unexplained injuries. After Hall responded to the call, he informed Shelton he had shot both Sancho and Zeke nine days ago and he attempted to take Sancho for a second euthanization attempt.
Shelton and Jennings filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, but their suit was dismissed largely based on Shelton’s voluntary abandonment of the dogs.
“Shelton contests the voluntariness of her abandonment of the two dogs on the grounds that she only ‘temporarily’ agreed to abandon the dogs with the expectation that they would be taken to the pound ‘until [she] could figure out how to get them back,’” Judge Gregory Phillips wrote for the three-judge 10th Circuit panel. “The problem for Shelton is that she still did not state a plausible claim — that is, the [second amended complaint] did not allege that the officers, the mayor, or the city had any objective basis to know of her subjective intent to reclaim the dogs.”
Federal sex abuse case dismissed on Indian law technicality
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the aggravated sexual abuse in Indian Country conviction of Dennis Hebert and ordered the district court to acquit him after finding federal prosecutors failed to prove Hebert’s Indian status beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. The ruling prevents the federal government from refiling charges, but it notes state and tribal authorities may still file charges.
Hebert was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma where prosecutors alleged he sexually assaulted a 6-year-old Indian boy within the Choctaw Reservation. Since Hebert’s victim was an Indian, 10th Circuit precedent required federal prosecutors to prove he was not an Indian beyond a reasonable doubt.
At trial, the government offered the following evidence to prove Hebert’s non-Indian status:
- his step-daughter, Kara Byers, testified that she did not know if he was a member of a tribe, he never mentioned being Indian, and that she believed he identified as “part Mexican”;
- Choctaw Nation Lighthorse investigator Dakota Grantham testified he could not remember asking Hebert if he was a tribal citizen and that Hebert identified as “Latino, Hispanic” when he interviewed him;
- Grantham testified he “believed” he called the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole nations to inquire about Hebert’s membership, but he was not sure, and he did not have documentation of Hebert’s Indian status;
- Deputy U.S. marshal Chad Sensor testified Hebert never identified as Indian during his arrest or booking;
- FBI special agent Paul Sparke testified he contacted the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole nations and “did not receive any information indicating that Mr. Hebert was an Indian”; and
- Hebert’s Alabama and Florida driver’s licenses listed his race as “white.”
The 10th Circuit found the evidence presented underwhelming.
“As noted above, the prosecution needed to prove (1) that Mr. Hebert has no Indian blood or (2) that neither a tribe nor the federal government recognizes him as an Indian,” Judge Scott Matheson wrote. “In sum, the sparse evidence showed (1) Ms. Byers lived with Mr. Hebert only briefly and lacked awareness of his being a member of or affiliated with any tribe; (2) Mr. Hebert did not racially identify as an Indian; and (3) he did not spontaneously incriminate himself to law enforcement by stating whether he was an Indian — hardly enough to be ‘firmly convinced’ that Mr. Hebert was not an Indian and far short of ‘substantial.'”
Judge Harris Hartz wrote a concurrence, arguing the 10th Circuit should reconsider whether Indian status is treated as an element of the crime or as an affirmative defense.
“Under principles of common sense, statutory interpretation, and Indian law, non-Indian status should be an affirmative defense,” Hartz wrote. “As a result, defendant Hebert should have to make a showing of his status as an Indian before the government has to rebut that proposition beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Hebert had not been charged in an Oklahoma district court or Choctaw Nation Tribal Court at the time of this article’s publication.
Former state penitentiary chaplain set to accept plea deal
A McAlester man who worked as a chaplain for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections is set to be sentenced next month for charges that he used a state-issued computer to engage in sexually explicit conversations about children.
David Prince, 42, was charged Nov. 7, 2023, in Pittsburg County District Court with felony counts of procuring, producing, distributing or possessing juvenile pornography, as well as violating Oklahoma’s computer crimes statute.
According to an affidavit filed in the case, the Oklahoma Counter Terrorism Intelligence Center alerted authorities to possible criminal activity involving Prince after monitoring software flagged his state computer usage. The state deploys programs that track employee activity, which analysts review before forwarding concerns to agencies or law enforcement.
Investigators placed additional monitoring on Prince’s account after he allegedly viewed pornography repeatedly and engaged in explicit chats. OSBI was notified after Prince claimed in an Oct. 31, 2023, conversation on Reddit, using the user ID daveatbigmac, that he engaged in sexual acts with minors, the affidavit states. Analysts recorded Prince using two monitors — one for work and another to search for pornography and discuss sexual contact with minors.
Agents executed search warrants Nov. 6, 2023, at Prince’s home and for his cell phone, where OSBI forensic analysts reportedly found multiple images consistent with child sexual abuse material. Prince later told investigators he had viewed such material in the past but said his online claims of sexual contact with minors were “fantasy.”
Court records show a plea hearing was scheduled for Jan. 7 after Prince waived his right to a jury trial Oct. 24.
Karl Fontenot suing state, local agencies as ‘Innocent Man’ case proceeds
The third trial of Karl Fontenot, a man convicted twice for the 1984 murder of Donna Denise Haraway and made famous by a John Grisham book and ensuing documentary, is proceeding after the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in October that Fontenot’s murder confession can be presented in district court.
Fontenot, now 61, was convicted alongside Thomas “Tommy” Ward for kidnapping and murdering Haraway from a convenience store in Ada. The two were convicted before Haraway’s body was found, based in part on a murder confession Fontenot later said was a dream. When Haraway’s body was found two years later, evidence from her body’s location and condition contradicted Fontenot’s confession. Fontenot also later claimed his confession was coerced.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit affirmed a lower court decision to throw out Fontenot’s conviction in 2021, based on violations of his Brady rights. The Oklahoma Supreme Court appointed Tulsa County District Judge Clifford Smith to preside over his new trial, and Comanche County District Attorney Kyle Cabelka was tasked with handling the re-prosecution. In February 2024, Smith granted Fontenot’s attorneys’ motion to suppress the confession. The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed Smith’s decision.
“A defendant can contest the admission of his confession based upon lack of corroborating evidence at trial, but such contest must occur after the subject evidence is properly presented,” Judge Gary Lumpkin wrote for the majority. “That did not happen in this case. The district court abused its discretion in granting the motion to suppress (the) appellee’s confession.”
Attorney General Gentner Drummond praised the decision.
“This decision upholds the fundamental principle that both parties are entitled to present their evidence at trial,” he said in a press release. “This case involves the brutal murder of a young newlywed with her whole life ahead of her, and justice demands that we be allowed to present our case in full.”
Meanwhile, Fontenot is suing a litany of defendants over the proceedings of his initial investigation and trial in 1984. Among the defendants are the city of Ada, local law enforcement agents (and their estates, in the cases of those who have since died), retired Pontotoc County DA Bill Pederson and four retired Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents.
“Although investigating officers from the Ada Police Department, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, the Pontotoc County Sheriff’s Office, and the Pontotoc County District Attorney’s Office botched the initial investigation into this horrible crime, destroying physical evidence at the scene and failing to follow up on obvious leads, they knew from the beginning that Mr. Fontenot did not match any description they had obtained of the likely suspect,” Fontenot’s complaint alleges.
A meeting of the OSBI Commission on Dec. 8 went into executive session regarding the suit.
“The AG is representing the parties in that, and really, we were just giving an update to the board,” OSBI Director Greg Mashburn said after the meeting.
