Sanction teardown · Civil Resolution Tribunal, Canada · 2025-02-14
Geismayr v. The Owners, Strata Plan KAS 1970
What happened
In Civil Resolution Tribunal, Canada, a filing relied on Copilot to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited a nonexistent case (one of nine AI-sourced items without legal citations); tribunal found it does not exist and is likely a Copilot hallucination.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited a nonexistent case (one of nine AI-sourced items without legal citations); tribunal found it does not exist and is likely a Copilot hallucination.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited a nonexistent case (one of nine AI-sourced items without legal citations); tribunal found it does not exist and is likely a Copilot hallucination.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited a nonexistent case (one of nine AI-sourced items without legal citations); tribunal found it does not exist and is likely a Copilot hallucination.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited a nonexistent case (one of nine AI-sourced items without legal citations); tribunal found it does not exist and is likely a Copilot hallucination.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited a nonexistent case (one of nine AI-sourced items without legal citations); tribunal found it does not exist and is likely a Copilot hallucination.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited a nonexistent case (one of nine AI-sourced items without legal citations); tribunal found it does not exist and is likely a Copilot hallucination.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited a nonexistent case (one of nine AI-sourced items without legal citations); tribunal found it does not exist and is likely a Copilot hallucination.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited a nonexistent case (one of nine AI-sourced items without legal citations); tribunal found it does not exist and is likely a Copilot hallucination.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Applicants misrepresented Jordison (2013) as supporting that strata cannot force removal of unauthorized alterations; tribunal noted the three 2013 Jordison decisions exist but none concern unauthorized alterations.
Which AI tool
Copilot. 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
Citations ignored
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/471/Geismayr_v_The_Owners_Strata_Plan_KAS_1970_CRT_Canada_14_February_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).