What was hallucinated

False Quotes: Case Law | Mr Malone’s submissions presented a passage as a verbatim quote about national courts being 'decentralised courts' from §68 of Case C-416/10; the Court could find no such text and Malone later replaced it with a different quote from C-234/17 (Celmer). || Fabricated: Legal Norm | Applicants cited 'Article 178 TEU' as a basis for obligations; TEU contains no such article. || Misrepresented: Legal Norm | Applicants relied on Article 17 TEU to ground obligations; Court noted its relevance was not apparent as Article 17 TEU concerns the EU Commission’s institutional role. || Misrepresented: Exhibits & Submissions | Affidavit alleged breaches of 'Condition 7 of PL06/24' and 'Condition 4 of PL22/751' regarding bunding; Court found those condition numbers do not address bunding (the appealed permissions had different condition numbering; PL22/751 uses Condition 5).

Details

Referring to Ayinde, the judge held that "The principle is essentially the same - though I hasten to say that I would not push the analogy too far as to a factual comparison of the present case with that case and the error in the present case is not of the order of the misconduct in that case. However, appreciable judicial time was wasted on the issue - not least trying to find the source of the quotation. And it does illustrate:The vital importance of precision and accuracy in written submissions. That duty lies on lay litigants as much as on lawyers.That text in submissions formatted so as to convey that it is a direct and verbatim quotation from an identified source must be exactly that. Of course, it is permissible to edit the text (for example to exclude irrelevant content or by underlining for emphasis) but, if so, that it has been done must be apparent on the face of the document.That opposing parties are entitled to written submissions in good time to check them.43. All that said, in a substantive sense, the issue is not vital to this case. The underlying proposition for which Mr Malone contends - that domestic courts must implement EU law - is uncontroversial. Not least for that reason, and in light also of the manner in which Mr Malone generally presented his case at the hearing, I am inclined to accept that there was no attempt or intention to mislead and accept also that Mr Malone has apologized for the error. It does not affect the outcome of the present motions."

Sanction teardown · High Court, Ireland · 2025-06-23

Malone & Anor v Laois County Council & Ors

What happened

In High Court, Ireland, 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:

False Quotes (Case Law)

Mr Malone’s submissions presented a passage as a verbatim quote about national courts being 'decentralised courts' from §68 of Case C-416/10; the Court could find no such text and Malone later replaced it with a different quote from C-234/17 (Celmer).
Fabricated (Legal Norm)

Applicants cited 'Article 178 TEU' as a basis for obligations; TEU contains no such article.
Misrepresented (Legal Norm)

Applicants relied on Article 17 TEU to ground obligations; Court noted its relevance was not apparent as Article 17 TEU concerns the EU Commission’s institutional role.
Misrepresented (Exhibits & Submissions)

Affidavit alleged breaches of 'Condition 7 of PL06/24' and 'Condition 4 of PL22/751' regarding bunding; Court found those condition numbers do not address bunding (the appealed permissions had different condition numbering; PL22/751 uses Condition 5).

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

Warning

Additional detail

Referring to Ayinde, the judge held that "The principle is essentially the same - though I hasten to say that I would not push the analogy too far as to a factual comparison of the present case with that case and the error in the present case is not of the order of the misconduct in that case. However, appreciable judicial time was wasted on the issue - not least trying to find the source of the quotation. And it does illustrate:The vital importance of precision and accuracy in written submissions. That duty lies on lay litigants as much as on lawyers.That text in submissions formatted so as to convey that it is a direct and verbatim quotation from an identified source must be exactly that. Of course, it is permissible to edit the text (for example to exclude irrelevant content or by underlining for emphasis) but, if so, that it has been done must be apparent on the face of the document.That opposing parties are entitled to written submissions in good time to check them.43. All that said, in a substantive sense, the issue is not vital to this case. The underlying proposition for which Mr Malone contends - that domestic courts must implement EU law - is uncontroversial. Not least for that reason, and in light also of the manner in which Mr Malone generally presented his case at the hearing, I am inclined to accept that there was no attempt or intention to mislead and accept also that Mr Malone has apologized for the error. It does not affect the outcome of the present motions."

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/567/Malone__Anor_v_Laois_County_Council__Ors_Ireland_23_June_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).