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Was Miles (a pseudonym) v Saunders (a pseudonym) [2026] VCC 325 on the other side of your case?

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Miles (a pseudonym) v Saunders (a pseudonym) [2026] VCC 325

Court
VCC
Jurisdiction
Australia
Decided
2026-07-03
AI tool
Unidentified
Outcome
Appeal dismissed; court disallowed reliance on the AI-generated authorities and the appellant resiled from those submissions; no professional sanction imposed
Monetary penalty
None reported

What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Appellant relied on an authority cited as DPP v C-C [2019] VCC 123 which the court could not locate and which the appellant admitted came from generative AI. || Fabricated: Case Law | Appellant relied on an authority cited as Re KJ [2020] VMC 112 that the court could not verify and which was disclosed as from online AI research. || Fabricated: Case Law | Appellant cited R v O’Connor [2017] VSC 693 as supporting revocation for mistakes of law; the court could not locate this citation and the appellant acknowledged reliance on AI-generated content.

Details

The appellant filed submissions citing several case authorities which the court's associates could not locate. On questioning, the appellant admitted she had compiled parts of her submissions using generative AI and that some cited authorities were produced by her online research and were inaccurate or non-existent. The court refused to give weight to those AI-generated authorities, the appellant abandoned reliance on them, and the appeal was dismissed on the merits. No professional or monetary sanctions were imposed.

Sanction teardown · VCC, Australia · 2026-07-03

Miles (a pseudonym) v Saunders (a pseudonym) [2026] VCC 325

What happened

In VCC, 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:

  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Appellant relied on an authority cited as DPP v C-C [2019] VCC 123 which the court could not locate and which the appellant admitted came from generative AI.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Appellant relied on an authority cited as Re KJ [2020] VMC 112 that the court could not verify and which was disclosed as from online AI research.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Appellant cited R v O’Connor [2017] VSC 693 as supporting revocation for mistakes of law; the court could not locate this citation and the appellant acknowledged reliance on AI-generated content.

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

Appeal dismissed; court disallowed reliance on the AI-generated authorities and the appellant resiled from those submissions; no professional sanction imposed

Additional detail

The appellant filed submissions citing several case authorities which the court's associates could not locate. On questioning, the appellant admitted she had compiled parts of her submissions using generative AI and that some cited authorities were produced by her online research and were inaccurate or non-existent. The court refused to give weight to those AI-generated authorities, the appellant abandoned reliance on them, and the appeal was dismissed on the merits. No professional or monetary sanctions were imposed.

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/2977/Miles_a_pseudonym_v_Saunders_a_pseudonym_2026_VCC_325_3_July_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/2977/Miles_a_pseudonym_v_Saunders_a_pseudonym_2026_VCC_325_3_July_2026.pdf

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