Enviro Group Can’t Delay Handing Over AI Prompts, Shell Contends: Artificial Intelligence Trends

Expert AI Prompts Are Becoming Ordinary Discovery Material, Not a Special Category

In a Clean Water Act dispute between Conservation Law Foundation and Shell Oil Products US, Triton Terminaling LLC and Motiva Enterprises, Shell told a Connecticut federal court that CLF cannot delay complying with a magistrate judge's order to search for AI "prompts" its expert witness, Naomi Oreskes, may have used while drafting her report. U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas O. Farrish had already ruled in Shell's favor, and CLF is now trying to stay that order while it appeals. Shell's opposition, covered by Law360's Gina Kim and flagged by Doug Austin at eDiscovery Today, argues plainly: "AI is not entitled to any special, unwritten discovery rules." The dispute is happening in 2026, as courts work out, case by case, how existing discovery rules apply to generative AI.

Does an expert's AI use now get treated like any other methodology?

Yes — Shell's position, backed by the magistrate judge's order, is that AI prompts and outputs are ordinary reliance materials subject to standard production rules.

CLF argued the discovery stipulation between the parties shielded "expert notes, drafts or communications" made during report drafting. Judge Farrish disagreed, and Shell's brief leans hard on that reasoning: materials showing an expert's data selection, filtering and methodological choices go directly to the reliability of her opinions, so they're fair game. For buyers, the takeaway isn't about this one case — it's that a court has now explicitly refused to invent a carve-out for AI just because the tooling is new.

What happens if the prompts no longer exist?

Nonexistence doesn't end the obligation, Shell argues — a party must still search for and produce what existed at any point, even if it's since been deleted.

CLF says Oreskes used AI only to "cull a large document universe" and that it has repeatedly confirmed, in good faith, that no responsive prompts or outputs remain. Shell isn't accepting that at face value, and neither, apparently, is the judge: Oreskes' own research assistant used the word "prompts" in a written declaration, which is part of why Farrish doubted CLF's account. That's the real lesson here — a party's characterization of its own AI workflow, made informally, became evidence used against it.

Why does "prompts" versus "search terms" matter so much?

Because the label a witness or assistant uses informally can later be read back as an admission about what actually happened during analysis.

CLF's fallback position is that Oreskes never used "prompts" at all — only "search terms" — and that those were already turned over. Whether that distinction holds will likely depend on how the underlying tool actually logged the interaction, not on which word someone used in a declaration.

What should e-discovery buyers ask their own vendors now?

Ask whether every AI-assisted step in a workflow — prompts, filters, outputs — is captured and retained by default, not reconstructed after a dispute begins.

This case turned partly on a stray word in a declaration, not on a system log. Any platform that runs AI over privileged or expert-facing material should be able to show, without argument, exactly what inputs and outputs existed at each stage and preserve them under the same chain-of-custody discipline as the rest of the record — because the alternative is litigating your own vocabulary in front of a judge.

Frequently asked questions

What case is this?

Conservation Law Foundation Inc. v. Shell Oil Products US and related entities, a Clean Water Act dispute pending before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas O. Farrish in Connecticut federal court.

Does this only affect expert witnesses?

The ruling addresses expert reliance materials specifically, but the reasoning — that AI use isn't exempt from ordinary discovery rules — has broader implications for any AI-assisted work product in litigation.

Has the underlying order been overturned?

No. As of Shell's opposition brief, CLF's stay motion and its broader objection to Judge Farrish's order remained pending before the district court.

Sources: eDiscovery Today (Doug Austin), reporting on coverage by Law360 (Gina Kim).