Sanction teardown · DC Yichang City (Hubei), China · 2026-07-21
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What happened
In DC Yichang City (Hubei), China, a filing relied on an unnamed/unconfirmed AI tool to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Submitted material cited a real-case webpage but fabricated the judgment's operative reasoning (虚构裁判要旨). Court found the case existed online but the presented judgment summary was invented.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Material cited a case from another province with a case number and China Judgments Online link; court could not find the case number and deemed the case fictitious.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)One provided case number existed but corresponded to a bribery conviction; the content submitted bore no relation to that actual judgment.
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Misrepresented (Legal Norm)Submitted "judicial interpretation" clauses attributed to the Supreme Court and Supreme Procuratorate were altered from the genuine text; key provisions were tampered with.
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Fabricated (Legal Norm)Materials cited national-department notifications but fabricated the documents' core clauses and key content.
Which AI tool
an unnamed/unconfirmed AI tool. Note: Charlotin's public database records tool attribution only where a court order, brief, or reporting on the matter states it explicitly; "unidentified" or "implied" means the record indicates AI use but does not name a specific product — we do not guess.
Outcome
Admonishment
Additional detail
During trial the judge checked reference materials submitted by the defense and found many items to be AI-generated or altered: fabricated cases (case numbers not found on China Judgments Online), real cases with fabricated judgment summaries, an existing case number that actually corresponded to an unrelated bribery judgment, and altered judicial-interpretation text and fabricated departmental notifications. The lawyer said an assistant used an AI tool to compile the materials and failed to verify them. The court ruled that lawyers have an obligation to verify materials, admonished the lawyer in open court, and emphasized AI cannot excuse submission of false or altered materials. (Summary by GPT 5.1)
How Citation Safe would have caught this
Citation Safe runs three deterministic layers before a brief is filed: (1) does the citation exist against CourtListener's database of published opinions, (2) if quoted, does that exact language appear in the source, (3) does the cited case actually support the proposition it is cited for. Fabricated case citations fail Layer 1. Fabricated or misattributed quotations fail Layer 2 even when the underlying case is real. Misrepresented holdings — a real case cited for a proposition it does not support — are the target of Layer 3. None of these checks involve asking another language model whether the citation looks right; they are lookups and text-matches against the actual source, which is why a hallucinated citation has to survive a direct lookup against the authoritative source — not another model's opinion — to earn a VERIFIED stamp; our measured false-verify rate is published live at /quality.
Check a brief before you file it → · See our live false-verify rate
Source: https://news-qq-com.translate.goog/rain/a/20260721A08IHA00?id=20260721A08IHA00&path=a&app=news&suid&redirect_pc=1&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).