What was hallucinated

False Quotes: Case Law | One quote from Forstater v CDG Europe and others UKEAT/0105/20 was likely made up (see §791) || False Quotes: Case Law | A second quote was likely made up, this time from Lee v Ashers Baking Co Ltd [2018] UKSC 49 (see § 793)

Details

Allegations that these are made-up quotes involving AI were aired in various blogs and online comments (see, e.g., here and here).The tribunal eventually issued a correction, and then claimed that it was not AI but the result of "an exchange of correspondence between [the judge] and a judicial colleague" - which raises more questions than it answers.

Sanction teardown · Employment Tribunal (Scotland), UK · 2025-12-08

S. Peggie v. Fife Health & Dr. B. Upton

What happened

In Employment Tribunal (Scotland), UK, 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)

One quote from Forstater v CDG Europe and others UKEAT/0105/20 was likely made up (see §791)
False Quotes (Case Law)

A second quote was likely made up, this time from Lee v Ashers Baking Co Ltd [2018] UKSC 49 (see § 793)

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

Not specified in source record.

Additional detail

Allegations that these are made-up quotes involving AI were aired in various blogs and online comments (see, e.g., here and here).The tribunal eventually issued a correction, and then claimed that it was not AI but the result of "an exchange of correspondence between [the judge] and a judicial colleague" - which raises more questions than it answers.

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/1162/S_Peggie_v._Fife_Health__Dr__B_Upton_UK_8_December_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).