Sanction teardown · Federal Court, Australia · 2025-02-11
Luck v Commonwealth of Australia
What happened
In Federal Court, Australia, 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:
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited non-existent case 'Nicholson v Heaven [2000] FCA 191'; court noted [2000] FCA 191 is Western Australia v Ward and it does not support her proposition; chambers queried and applicant admitted erroneous citation.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Applicant cited non-existent 'Victoria v Humphries (2013) 228 FCR 145'; court observed the report at that citation is Kerrison v Melbourne City Council and it does not support the proposition; applicant did not provide the authority when asked.
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
The court dismissed the applicant's interlocutory application for disqualification and referral to a Full Court.
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/544/Luck_v_Commonwealth_of_Australia_Australia_11_February_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).