What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Defendants alleged numerous hallucinated (fabricated) citations appeared in El‑Ghannam's case‑specific report in this MDL; the court noted Bard had not identified any fully hallucinated citations in El‑Ghannam's General Report and found the AI challenge raised in reply untimely and insufficient to exclude the expert.

Details

Defendants raised in reply that Dr. El‑Ghannam used ChatGPT and that his case‑specific report contained hallucinated (fabricated) citations, citing a different MDL filing where hallucinated sources were confirmed. The Court found the AI argument untimely, noted Bard had not identified any fully hallucinated citations in the General Report, and observed El‑Ghannam admitted limited ChatGPT use but testified he wrote and verified the report. The Court refused to exclude opinions on that basis and imposed no sanction.

Sanction teardown · D. Arizona, USA · 2026-08-12

IN RE: Bard Implanted Port Catheter Products Liability Litigation

What happened

In D. Arizona, USA, a filing relied on ChatGPT to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:

Fabricated (Case Law)

Defendants alleged numerous hallucinated (fabricated) citations appeared in El‑Ghannam's case‑specific report in this MDL; the court noted Bard had not identified any fully hallucinated citations in El‑Ghannam's General Report and found the AI challenge raised in reply untimely and insufficient to exclude the expert.

Which AI tool

ChatGPT. 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

No exclusion of Expert Report

Additional detail

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/2846/IN_RE_Bard_Implanted_Port_Catheter_Products_Liability_Litigation_USA_12_August_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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