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Fernando Betancourt Gómez v. Colegio de Profesionales

Court
Puerto Rico
Jurisdiction
USA
Decided
2025-08-22
AI tool
Implied
Outcome
Trial court imposed a monetary sanction of $1,000 on the lawyers for causing unjustified delay; referred the lawyers to the Puerto Rico Supreme Court for disciplinary evaluation; judge inhibited from cases involving those lawyers and case to be reassigned.
Monetary penalty
1000 USD

What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Motion attributed a non-existent Suárez v. CMI Caribe, 180 DPR 367, 376 (2010) and quoted the Tribunal Supremo text — court found the citation and quoted text fictitious. || Fabricated: Case Law | Motion cited Otero-Burgos v. Inter Med Supplies, Inc., 137 DPR 841, 848 (1995) with an attributed Supreme Court quote that does not exist; court found the citation fictitious. || Fabricated: Case Law | Motion cited Pérez v. Horizon Lines, 2020 TSPR 61 and attributed a textual quote of the Tribunal Supremo that the court could not locate; found fictitious. || Fabricated: Case Law | Motion cited Rosado v. ELA, 2004 TSPR 13 and attributed a quotation about Ley 115 that does not appear in the reported decision; court treated the citation as fictitious. || False Quotes: Case Law | Motion relied on Colón v. Romero Barceló, 112 DPR 573 (1982) (a real decision) but attributed a specific quoted formulation that the court determined does not appear in that opinion. || Fabricated: Case Law | Motion cited Ramos Lozada v. ELA, 174 DPR 650 (2008) and attributed a quoted formulation on qualified immunity that the court could not find; treated as fictitious. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Repeated misnaming of a known U.S. Supreme Court case as 'Ashcroft v. Global, 556 US 662 (2009)' instead of Ashcroft v. Iqbal — court noted this as a likely technological-generation or transcription error.

Sanction teardown · Puerto Rico, USA · 2025-08-22

Fernando Betancourt Gómez v. Colegio de Profesionales

What happened

In Puerto Rico, 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)
    Motion attributed a non-existent Suárez v. CMI Caribe, 180 DPR 367, 376 (2010) and quoted the Tribunal Supremo text — court found the citation and quoted text fictitious.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Motion cited Otero-Burgos v. Inter Med Supplies, Inc., 137 DPR 841, 848 (1995) with an attributed Supreme Court quote that does not exist; court found the citation fictitious.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Motion cited Pérez v. Horizon Lines, 2020 TSPR 61 and attributed a textual quote of the Tribunal Supremo that the court could not locate; found fictitious.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Motion cited Rosado v. ELA, 2004 TSPR 13 and attributed a quotation about Ley 115 that does not appear in the reported decision; court treated the citation as fictitious.
  • False Quotes (Case Law)
    Motion relied on Colón v. Romero Barceló, 112 DPR 573 (1982) (a real decision) but attributed a specific quoted formulation that the court determined does not appear in that opinion.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Motion cited Ramos Lozada v. ELA, 174 DPR 650 (2008) and attributed a quoted formulation on qualified immunity that the court could not find; treated as fictitious.
  • Misrepresented (Case Law)
    Repeated misnaming of a known U.S. Supreme Court case as 'Ashcroft v. Global, 556 US 662 (2009)' instead of Ashcroft v. Iqbal — court noted this as a likely technological-generation or transcription error.

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

Trial court imposed a monetary sanction of $1,000 on the lawyers for causing unjustified delay; referred the lawyers to the Puerto Rico Supreme Court for disciplinary evaluation; judge inhibited from cases involving those lawyers and case to be reassigned. (monetary penalty: 1000 USD.)

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/832/Orden_TPI_-_SJ_sanciones.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/832/Orden_TPI_-_SJ_sanciones.pdf

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