What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Exhibits & Submissions | Allegation of an 'unprecedented mass recusal of all thirty-nine Contra Costa Superior Court judges on July 24, 2025 (Ex. DD)' presented without support; court treated as unsupported/likely AI-generated. || Misrepresented: Exhibits & Submissions | Misstatement that Plaintiff's former girlfriend was affiliated with Defendants; court found cited exhibit (Exhibit Q) does not support that affiliation. || Fabricated: Exhibits & Submissions | Claim of 'ongoing seizure of essential assistive technology devices preventing compliance with court-ordered treatment (Ex. EE)' presented without supporting evidence and characterized as unsupported.

Sanction teardown · N.D. California, USA · 2025-10-21

Thomas Joseph Goddard v. Sares-Regis Group, Inc., et al.

What happened

In N.D. California, USA, 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 (Exhibits & Submissions)

Allegation of an 'unprecedented mass recusal of all thirty-nine Contra Costa Superior Court judges on July 24, 2025 (Ex. DD)' presented without support; court treated as unsupported/likely AI-generated.
Misrepresented (Exhibits & Submissions)

Misstatement that Plaintiff's former girlfriend was affiliated with Defendants; court found cited exhibit (Exhibit Q) does not support that affiliation.
Fabricated (Exhibits & Submissions)

Claim of 'ongoing seizure of essential assistive technology devices preventing compliance with court-ordered treatment (Ex. EE)' presented without supporting evidence and characterized as unsupported.

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.

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/910/Goddard_v._Sares_Regis_Group_USA_21_October_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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