What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Court identified this citation as non-existent and cited it as an example of fabricated authority used by the plaintiffs. || Fabricated: Case Law | Listed by the court among case citations that do not exist in the record; used by plaintiffs to support legal propositions. || Fabricated: Case Law | Appeared repeatedly in plaintiffs' filings but the court flagged it as a non-existent estate decision generated by AI. || Fabricated: Legal Norm | Court noted plaintiffs quoted or relied on a purported professional rule citation that did not exist as cited. || False Quotes: Case Law | Court observed plaintiffs repeatedly quoted language attributed to existing cases that the court determined did not actually appear in those opinions.

Sanction teardown · Nevada DC, USA · 2025-11-30

Cappucci v. Maupin, Cox & Legoy, LLP

What happened

In Nevada DC, 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)

Court identified this citation as non-existent and cited it as an example of fabricated authority used by the plaintiffs.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Listed by the court among case citations that do not exist in the record; used by plaintiffs to support legal propositions.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Appeared repeatedly in plaintiffs' filings but the court flagged it as a non-existent estate decision generated by AI.
Fabricated (Legal Norm)

Court noted plaintiffs quoted or relied on a purported professional rule citation that did not exist as cited.
False Quotes (Case Law)

Court observed plaintiffs repeatedly quoted language attributed to existing cases that the court determined did not actually appear in those opinions.

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

Not specified in source record.

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/2343/16_-_Cappucci_v_Maupin_Cox_And_Legoy_LLP.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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