What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Plaintiff's counsel cited several Family Court decisions in the complaint that do not exist; the court could not locate them in legal databases and accepted they were AI-generated. || Misrepresented: Exhibits & Submissions | Plaintiff's counsel filed different judgments instead of the specific ones cited in the complaint, which were not attached; the court noted the mismatch.

Details

AI UseThe plaintiff’s attorney denied deliberate use of generative AI, claiming the wrong file numbers were inserted by mistake. The court rejected this explanation, finding the hallucinated decisions did not exist in any legal archive and could not plausibly arise from mere misnumbering. The court accepted the defendant’s assertion that the fabricated citations originated from generative AI.Hallucination DetailsOut of five rulings cited in the petition, three were not found in any legal database. Two additional cases were filed after the hearing, but neither matched the original citations or contained the propositions advanced in the pleading. The court found the overall drafting pattern aligned with generative AI hallucination phenomena.Ruling/SanctionJudge Merav Eliyahu dismissed the petition and imposed personal costs of ₪1,500 against Plaintiff’s counsel (payable to the state) and ₪3,500 (payable to the opposing party). She cited Supreme Court precedent and ethical commentary emphasizing the risks of hallucinated legal drafting. She emphasized that lawyers must not rely blindly on AI tools and must always verify the authenticity of legal authorities cited in pleadings.Key Judicial ReasoningThe judge found that legal pleadings are the “foundational documents of judicial proceedings” and must be “accurate, reliable, and competently drafted.” Submitting fictitious judgments constitutes not only a procedural abuse but an ethical breach. Even absent bad faith, failure to verify AI-generated legal content breaches a lawyer’s core obligations.

Sanction teardown · Israel, Israel · 2025-04-29

Anonymous v. Anonymous

What happened

In Israel, Israel, 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)

Plaintiff's counsel cited several Family Court decisions in the complaint that do not exist; the court could not locate them in legal databases and accepted they were AI-generated.
Misrepresented (Exhibits & Submissions)

Plaintiff's counsel filed different judgments instead of the specific ones cited in the complaint, which were not attached; the court noted the mismatch.

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

Petition dismissed in limine; Plaintiff’s counsel ordered to pay ₪1,500 in personal costs to the state and ₪3,500 to the opposing party (monetary penalty: 5000 ILS.)

Additional detail

AI UseThe plaintiff’s attorney denied deliberate use of generative AI, claiming the wrong file numbers were inserted by mistake. The court rejected this explanation, finding the hallucinated decisions did not exist in any legal archive and could not plausibly arise from mere misnumbering. The court accepted the defendant’s assertion that the fabricated citations originated from generative AI.Hallucination DetailsOut of five rulings cited in the petition, three were not found in any legal database. Two additional cases were filed after the hearing, but neither matched the original citations or contained the propositions advanced in the pleading. The court found the overall drafting pattern aligned with generative AI hallucination phenomena.Ruling/SanctionJudge Merav Eliyahu dismissed the petition and imposed personal costs of ₪1,500 against Plaintiff’s counsel (payable to the state) and ₪3,500 (payable to the opposing party). She cited Supreme Court precedent and ethical commentary emphasizing the risks of hallucinated legal drafting. She emphasized that lawyers must not rely blindly on AI tools and must always verify the authenticity of legal authorities cited in pleadings.Key Judicial ReasoningThe judge found that legal pleadings are the “foundational documents of judicial proceedings” and must be “accurate, reliable, and competently drafted.” Submitting fictitious judgments constitutes not only a procedural abuse but an ethical breach. Even absent bad faith, failure to verify AI-generated legal content breaches a lawyer’s core obligations.

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://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/368/Anonymous_v._Anonymous_Israel_April_29_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).