Skip to main content
Citation Safe

Was Cologne District Court, 312 F 130/25 on the other side of your case?

Check their next brief before they file — Opposition Check verifies every citation in a filed brief for $49, no signup. Get Opposition Check →

Cologne District Court, 312 F 130/25

Court
Cologne District Court (Family Court)
Jurisdiction
Germany
Decided
2025-07-02
AI tool
Implied
Outcome
Court admonished the attorney and warned that knowingly disseminating untruths may violate BRAO §43a(3)
Monetary penalty
None reported

What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Doctrinal Work | Court found citation to 'Viefhues' in a Munich commentary and marginal nos. (9th ed. 2021, marginal no. 65 ff.) to be incorrect and fictitious; actual commentary and edition details differ. || Fabricated: Doctrinal Work | Court could not locate the cited book 'Brons, Kindeswohl und Elternverantwortung, 2013, pp. 175 ff.' and determined the reference to be fictitious. || Fabricated: Doctrinal Work | Reference to 'Völkl, FamRB 2015, p. 74' was found to be incorrect/misleading; the actual FamRB 2015 pages cited contain a different essay (pp. 70-77) and the asserted citation is fictitious. || Fabricated: Doctrinal Work | Citation 'Meyer-Götz, in: Hauß/Gernhuber, Familienrecht, 6th ed. 2022, § 1671, marginal no. 33' was not found; court concluded the reference does not exist and appears conflated. || Fabricated: Case Law | Citation to an 'OLG Frankfurt' decision reported at 'FamRZ 2021, p. 70' was incorrect; the court determined the cited decision/reference was fictitious or mislocated.

Sanction teardown · Cologne District Court (Family Court), Germany · 2025-07-02

Cologne District Court, 312 F 130/25

What happened

In Cologne District Court (Family Court), Germany, 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 (Doctrinal Work)
    Court found citation to 'Viefhues' in a Munich commentary and marginal nos. (9th ed. 2021, marginal no. 65 ff.) to be incorrect and fictitious; actual commentary and edition details differ.
  • Fabricated (Doctrinal Work)
    Court could not locate the cited book 'Brons, Kindeswohl und Elternverantwortung, 2013, pp. 175 ff.' and determined the reference to be fictitious.
  • Fabricated (Doctrinal Work)
    Reference to 'Völkl, FamRB 2015, p. 74' was found to be incorrect/misleading; the actual FamRB 2015 pages cited contain a different essay (pp. 70-77) and the asserted citation is fictitious.
  • Fabricated (Doctrinal Work)
    Citation 'Meyer-Götz, in: Hauß/Gernhuber, Familienrecht, 6th ed. 2022, § 1671, marginal no. 33' was not found; court concluded the reference does not exist and appears conflated.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Citation to an 'OLG Frankfurt' decision reported at 'FamRZ 2021, p. 70' was incorrect; the court determined the cited decision/reference was fictitious or mislocated.

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

Court admonished the attorney and warned that knowingly disseminating untruths may violate BRAO §43a(3)

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/746/Cologne_District_Court_312_F_130_25.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/746/Cologne_District_Court_312_F_130_25.pdf

Don’t be the next case in this database.

Citation Safe checks every citation against primary sources before it reaches a filing.

Try the free checkerBack to database

On the opposing side of their next motion?

Check their next brief through the same engine that would have caught this filing — $49, no signup, full annotated report you can attach to your Rule 11 or sanctions motion.

Open Opposition Check — $49Sanctions-motion template