Sanction teardown · D. Connecticut, USA · 2026-08-05
Ulish Kerry Terrace Booker, III v. U.S. Bank National Association
What happened
In D. Connecticut, USA, a filing relied on Gemini Pro; Perplexity; Cetient Legal AI; ChatGPT to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:
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Fabricated (Case Law)Nonexistent case cited in the brief; Court could not locate the opinion or support in the reporter cited.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Case citation in brief does not exist or points to unrelated reporter content.
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False Quotes (Legal Norm)Appellant misquoted Rule 17(a); Court identified the quoted language as incorrect compared to the rule's actual wording.
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False Quotes (Legal Norm)Appellant attributed a quotation to Fed. R. Bankr. P. 9011(b) that is actually from Fed. R. Civ. P. 11.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Cited U.S. Supreme Court case 'Mathews v. Dillon' does not exist at the provided citation.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Cited bankruptcy Lexis entry was nonexistent; Court could not find the reported decision.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Citation given with incorrect forum/locale; the cited opinion exists but not from the court/location claimed.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Case cited with incorrect court designation (wrong district) in appellant's table of authorities.
Which AI tool
Gemini Pro; Perplexity; Cetient Legal AI; ChatGPT. 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
Admonishment and warning
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/2784/Booker_USA_5_August_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).