What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Defendant cited Finch v. Smith as authority; the court found it is not a real case, indicating AI-fabricated precedent. || Misrepresented: Legal Norm | Defendant invoked Twombly's plausibility standard; the court noted Wyoming has not adopted that standard.

Details

Defendant Holly Nelson, appearing pro se, filed a motion to dismiss that included a fabricated case citation, Finch v. Smith, which does not exist. The court inferred that Nelson used AI to draft the motion without verifying the accuracy of the citations. The court issued an order to show cause, requiring Nelson to justify why her filing does not violate Rule 11, or alternatively, to withdraw her motion. If she fails to do so, the court intends to strike her motion entirely.

Sanction teardown · Wyoming Ch., USA · 2025-07-02

Angela and Theodore Chagnon v. Holly Nelson

What happened

In Wyoming Ch., USA, 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:

Fabricated (Case Law)

Defendant cited Finch v. Smith as authority; the court found it is not a real case, indicating AI-fabricated precedent.
Misrepresented (Legal Norm)

Defendant invoked Twombly's plausibility standard; the court noted Wyoming has not adopted that standard.

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

Order to show cause issued; potential striking of motion

Additional detail

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.

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Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/563/Chagnon_v._Nelson_USA_2_July_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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