What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Plaintiff's closing brief cited a non-existent appellate case; the court verified no such proceeding exists. || Fabricated: Legal Norm | Plaintiff relied on a non-existent statute; the court noted that a 'Fair Rent Law' has not been legislated.

Details

The submitted document was also an unedited draft containing instructional comments and placeholder text (e.g., "It is recommended to consult with a lawyer...") characteristic of an AI-generated template. The court held:"The defendants' counsel rightly argued that referring to non-existent citations is particularly burdensome, because it causes a waste of time in checking all the references. Therefore, in light of both the severity of these imaginary citations and the contempt shown by the document as a whole, it is necessary to award exemplary costs in favor of the defendants, as well as costs to the state treasury. " (translation by Gemini 2.5 Pro.)

Sanction teardown · Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, Israel · 2025-07-11

Zlatin v. Assayag et al

What happened

In Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, Israel, 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)

Plaintiff's closing brief cited a non-existent appellate case; the court verified no such proceeding exists.
Fabricated (Legal Norm)

Plaintiff relied on a non-existent statute; the court noted that a 'Fair Rent Law' has not been legislated.

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

The court imposed a monetary penalty on the party responsible for the fabricated citations. (monetary penalty: 25000 ILS.)

Additional detail

The submitted document was also an unedited draft containing instructional comments and placeholder text (e.g., "It is recommended to consult with a lawyer...") characteristic of an AI-generated template. The court held:"The defendants' counsel rightly argued that referring to non-existent citations is particularly burdensome, because it causes a waste of time in checking all the references. Therefore, in light of both the severity of these imaginary citations and the contempt shown by the document as a whole, it is necessary to award exemplary costs in favor of the defendants, as well as costs to the state treasury. " (translation by Gemini 2.5 Pro.)

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/656/zlatin.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).