Skip to main content
NOPE
Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

Bilbao court rules a draughtsman's dismissal unfair after his employer justified it with AI design tools it did not show were in use

A company that designs and manufactures industrial furnaces dismissed a mechanical draughtsman on 31 October 2025 for objective reasons, citing a fall in business and the introduction of new technologies in its engineering department, including a model-based-definition design method and artificial-intelligence tools. According to press reports of the judgment, the dismissal letter put the cost of the tool licences at 4,725 euros a year against his gross annual salary of 29,871 euros and argued that the saving exceeded 80%. The social section of the Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao declared the dismissal unfair, finding that the company had proved neither its economic losses nor the real implementation of the tools: an employee trained on the new method testified that she had never worked with it, and an implementation report was dated June 2026, seven months after the dismissal. The company must choose between reinstating the worker and paying 12,330.56 euros in compensation, less the amount already paid; the court rejected his claims that the dismissal was void and for a higher job category. One outlet reports that four draughtsmen were dismissed in total. El Periódico, which reported the same judgment in August 2026, dates it to early June 2026 and quotes the dismissal letter's statement that the company had introduced new artificial-intelligence systems that automate technical tasks previously done by specialised staff. The judgment was not read, and whether it is final is not reported.

AI system
Unidentified AI design tool
Occurred
31 Oct 2025
Reported
29 August 2026
Event location
Spain
What the AI did
Relation unknown
Reported harm
Professional Harm
Whose AI use
An institution’s AI use
Setting
Work · Justice
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account
6 claims: 6 reported. 5 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

AI system as recorded: Unspecified artificial-intelligence design tools and a model-based-definition (MBD) design method that, according to the employer's dismissal letter as reported, could automate part of a draughtsman's work; no product is named

What Happened

The dismissal. On 31 October 2025 a company that designs and manufactures industrial furnaces ended the contract of a mechanical draughtsman for objective reasons. According to the reports of the judgment, the dismissal letter cited a fall in new contracts in 2025 and a digital transformation in which the engineering department had begun using a model-based-definition (MBD) design method together with artificial-intelligence tools that, the company said, could automate part of the draughtsmen's work. The letter compared three tool licences costing 4,725 euros a year with the worker's gross annual salary of 29,871 euros and argued that the saving exceeded 80% and that the post had become structurally obsolete. The company paid 6,452.85 euros in severance and 1,194.11 euros for missing the notice period. EmpleoJob reports that four draughtsmen were dismissed in total; it does not describe the grounds for the other three.

The judgment. The worker sued, asking for the dismissal to be declared void as retaliation or, alternatively, unfair. The social section of the Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao rejected nullity but declared the dismissal unfair. On the economic grounds, the company had produced only its own reports and a spreadsheet. On the technology, an employee trained on the MBD method testified that she had never worked with it, the head of mechanical engineering said the tool had been tested and AI tools were used afterwards, internal documents showed the company was still studying AI-assisted design tools when it began preparing the dismissals in August 2025, and the implementation report it submitted was dated June 2026, seven months after the dismissal. The court found the economic, productive, technical and organisational causes unproven.

Remedy. The company has five days to choose between reinstatement with back pay and compensation of 12,330.56 euros, less the amount already paid. El Periódico, reporting the same judgment on 29 August 2026, quotes the dismissal letter: the company said it had introduced new artificial-intelligence systems that automate technical tasks previously done by specialised staff, so that the post had become structurally obsolete. It dates the judgment to early June 2026 and attributes it to Bilbao social court No. 7; it describes the worker as an engineer. The judgment itself was not read, whether it has been appealed is not reported, and the employer is not named.

Reported harm

The draughtsman lost his job in a dismissal his employer justified with AI design tools; a court later declared the dismissal unfair, according to press reports of the judgment.

How Harm Occurred

The employer dismissed the worker on the stated ground that AI design tools and a new design method made his post unnecessary at a fraction of his salary; the court found that the tools had not been shown to be in real use.

Outcome

Unknown

The Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao (social section) declared the dismissal unfair and gave the company five days to choose between reinstating the worker, with back pay from 31 October 2025, and paying 12,330.56 euros in compensation less the 6,452.85 euros already paid; it rejected the claims that the dismissal was void and for a higher professional category (judgment 252/2026 according to EmpleoJob). Whether the judgment is final is not reported.

What remains unknown

  • The exact date of the judgment (El Periódico says early June 2026) and whether it is final or under appeal.
  • Whether the court was social court No. 7 (El Periódico) and whether the worker was a draughtsman or an engineer: El Periódico calls him an engineer, the other outlets a mechanical draughtsman.
  • Which AI tools the employer had in mind; the reports name only the model-based-definition method and unspecified AI tools.
  • Whether the three other draughtsmen were dismissed on the same AI-related grounds.
  • The name of the employer, which the reports do not give.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The harm is the employer's dismissal of a draughtsman in response to its stated adoption of AI tools. According to the judgment as reported, the dismissal letter cited the introduction of new technologies and artificial-intelligence tools, together with a model-based-definition design method, and argued that the tools cost over 80% less than his salary; the court found that the company had not shown the tools were actually implemented. No source says an AI system produced any output about the worker, so the relation is unknown under the consequential-response exemption.

6 claims: 6 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported The employer dismissed a mechanical draughtsman on 31 October 2025, justifying the dismissal, among other reasons, by its introduction of new technologies and artificial-intelligence tools.

Causal attribution. The employer's justification as recorded in the dismissal letter and judgment, relayed by the outlets; one origin (the judgment).

  • noticiastrabajo.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'El Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao ha declarado improcedente el despido objetivo de un delineante mecánico después de que la empresa justificara su salida, entre otros motivos, por la implantación de nuevas tecnologías y herramientas de Inteligencia Artificial'; 'El despido se produjo el 31 de octubre de 2025'
  • hoyaragon.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'La empresa explicó que estaba inmersa en un proceso de transformación digital y que había empezado a trabajar con la metodología Model Based Definition (MBD) , junto con otras soluciones de Inteligencia Artificial.'
  • as.com(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'al declarar improcedente el cese de un delineante mecánico cuya empresa justificó su despido asegurando que un software de IA podía realizar sus funciones con un ahorro superior al 80%'
  • elperiodico.com(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'La Compañía ha apostado por la innovación continua , instaurando nuevos sistemas de Inteligencia Artificial ("IA") que permiten automatizar tareas técnicas anteriormente realizadas por personal especializado'
Reported The employer put the cost of the tool licences at 4,725 euros a year against the worker's gross annual salary of 29,871 euros and argued that the saving exceeded 80%.

Causal attribution. The employer's figures from its dismissal letter as relayed by the outlets; one origin.

  • noticiastrabajo.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'La compañía también alegó que las licencias de estas herramientas costaban 4.725 euros al año, mientras que el salario bruto anual del trabajador ascendía a 29.871 euros'
  • empleojob.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'Había adquirido tres licencias por 4.725 euros anuales , mientras que el salario bruto anual del trabajador ascendía a 29.871 euros, según los cálculos incluidos en la carta de despido.'
Reported The Bilbao court declared the dismissal unfair because the company proved neither its economic losses nor the real implementation of the tools it cited.

Causal attribution. The court's finding as relayed by the outlets; the judgment text was not read; one origin.

  • hoyaragon.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'El Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao ha declarado el despido improcedente porque la compañía no demostró ni las pérdidas económicas ni la implantación real de esas herramientas.'
  • empleojob.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'El caso llegó al Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao que en su sentencia 252/2026 ( ECLI:ES:TIS:2026:2026 ) dio parcialmente la razón al trabajador al declarar el despido como improcedente'
Reported Evidence before the court included a trained employee's testimony that she had never worked with the new design tool and an implementation report dated June 2026, seven months after the dismissal.

Causal attribution. Testimony and documents as summarised from the judgment by the outlets; one origin.

  • hoyaragon.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'una trabajadora declaró que había recibido formación para usarla pero que nunca había llegado a trabajar con ella'; 'fechado en junio de 2026 , pero el despido se había producido siete meses antes , en octubre de 2025'
  • empleojob.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'Una empleada que había recibido formación en el sistema MBD reconoció que nunca había llegado a trabajar con él .'
Reported The company must choose between reinstating the worker and paying 12,330.56 euros in compensation, less the 6,452.85 euros already paid; the court rejected his claims that the dismissal was void and for a higher job category.

Causal attribution. Remedy as relayed from the judgment; one origin. Whether the judgment is final is not stated.

  • hoyaragon.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'Al declarar el despido improcedente , la empresa debe elegir en cinco días entre readmitir al trabajador o indemnizarle. La indemnización por improcedencia se calculó en 12.330,56 euros .'; 'Como ya había cobrado 6.452,85 en el momento del despido, la cantidad pendiente se queda en 5.877,71 euros.'
  • empleojob.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'El juzgado, sin embargo, rechazó que el despido fuera nulo por vulneración de derechos fundamentales.'; 'Tampoco aceptó reconocer al trabajador una categoría profesional superior ni las diferencias salariales que reclamaba'
  • elperiodico.com(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'una reciente sentencia, fechada de principios de junio y compartida en redes sociales por el abogado laboralista Pere Vidal'; 'Es por ello que la empresa deberá pagar una compensación de 12.330,56 euros al trabajador damnificado.'
Reported EmpleoJob reports that the company dismissed three other draughtsmen as well, four in total.

Causal attribution. Single outlet; the reasons given for the other three dismissals are not described.

  • empleojob.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    'La decisión de reducir la plantilla no afectó únicamente a este empleado, ya que la compañía también prescindió de otros tres trabajadores de la misma categoría. En total, cuatro delineantes fueron despedidos.'

Sources

5 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in Spanish by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-16 and translated by the research agent (an AI) into English; no human translator or reviewer was involved. NoticiasTrabajo report on the Bilbao judgment, 25 September 2026; HTTP 200, full text read. The judgment itself was not read. Applies to s1.

Read in Spanish by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-16 and translated by the research agent (an AI) into English; no human translator or reviewer was involved. Hoy Aragón report on the same judgment, 25 September 2026; HTTP 200, full text read. Applies to s2.

Read in Spanish by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-16 and translated by the research agent (an AI) into English; no human translator or reviewer was involved. AS (Diario AS) report on the same judgment, September 2026; HTTP 200, full text read. Applies to s3.

Read in Spanish by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-16 and translated by the research agent (an AI) into English; no human translator or reviewer was involved. EmpleoJob report on the same judgment, which it identifies as judgment 252/2026 of the Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao, 15 October 2026; HTTP 200, full text read. Applies to s4.

Read in Spanish by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-16 and translated by the research agent (an AI) into English; no human translator or reviewer was involved. El Periódico report, 29 August 2026, on the same judgment (it gives the same 12,330.56-euro compensation), which it attributes to Bilbao social court No. 7, dates to early June 2026 and says a labour lawyer shared on social media; it calls the worker an engineer where the other outlets say mechanical draughtsman; HTTP 200, full text read. Applies to s5.

Event countries: Spain. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Spain.

El Periódico describes the employer as a Basque company ('la compañía vasca'), placing the employment relationship and the dismissal in Spain; the case was heard by the Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao. The worker's residence is not stated and is left unknown.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-16: Published as a consequential-response case: an employer dismissed a draughtsman on 31 October 2025, citing in its dismissal letter AI design tools that it said did his work for over 80% less, and a Bilbao labour court ruled the dismissal unfair because the company had not shown the tools were in real use. All facts come from press reports of the judgment, which was not read.

People described

A mechanical draughtsman employed by an industrial-furnace manufacturer since 2021

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

0 AI participants · 1 other person harmed

The claimant draughtsman (all four reports). EmpleoJob says three other draughtsmen were also dismissed, but no report describes their grounds, so they are not counted.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#dismissal#workplace-ai#labour-court#unfair-dismissal#spain#consequential-response

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Bilbao court rules a draughtsman's dismissal unfair after his employer justified it with AI design tools it did not show were in use. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-bilbao-court-rules-draughtsmans-dismissal-unfair-after-employer-cited-ai-tools-it-had-not-shown-in-use

BibTeX

@misc{2025_bilbao_court_rules_draughtsmans_dismissal_unfair_after_employer_cited_ai_tools_it_had_not_shown_in_use,
  title = {Bilbao court rules a draughtsman's dismissal unfair after his employer justified it with AI design tools it did not show were in use},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-bilbao-court-rules-draughtsmans-dismissal-unfair-after-employer-cited-ai-tools-it-had-not-shown-in-use}
}

Related cases

Medium GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 5 (reported)

Massachusetts: fired teacher asks court to vacate an arbitration, saying the arbitrator improperly used AI tools to judge her AI-detector evidence

A kindergarten teacher at a public elementary school in Concord, Massachusetts, was dismissed in August 2025 after an unsatisfactory evaluation. In arbitration she argued that some of the principal's evaluations may have been produced with AI, relying on GPTZero estimates; the principal denied using AI beyond grammar checks. According to the arbitration decision as reported by The Concord Bridge, the arbitrator stated in an appendix that he used two AI tools, GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 5, to research whether GPTZero was reliable, checked some of the sources they supplied, concluded that GPTZero's results deserved no weight, and upheld the dismissal on 27 August 2026. On 28 September 2026 the teacher asked Suffolk Superior Court to vacate the decision, alleging that the AI-assisted research was an improper investigation outside the hearing record that the parties were not told about or allowed to challenge. These are allegations in a complaint; the district declined to comment and no court has ruled.

High Unidentified image tool

Jeju: police refer a middle-school student over secretly filming teachers and making sexual deepfake composites; teachers dispute victim count and legal aid

Jeju Dongbu police announced on 23 September 2026 that a student at a middle school on Jeju had been referred to prosecutors without detention on 17 September for violating the Sexual Violence Punishment Act (filming with a camera or similar device). The student's phone was voluntarily submitted by his guardians and forensically examined; the examination found footage relating to some teachers and some sexual composites, and the student admitted the conduct. News1 reported that the student was booked for filming a teacher's body with his phone during a school field trip around mid-July 2026, that the offending had continued for several months with multiple victims, and that police found no indication the composites had been distributed. Police told Seoul Shinmun there were more victim teachers than the one first reported but withheld the number to avoid secondary harm, and that no student at the school was a victim; the Jeju teachers' union questioned whether the full scope of harm had been established. According to the union, two months on the victim teachers were receiving hospital treatment and counselling while teaching daily, gave police statements on 14 September without a lawyer, attended the regional teachers' rights protection committee on 17 September without institutional support, wrote the criminal complaint themselves, and were offered 3.3 million won in legal fees for all of them together, payable after the case ends; two requests to meet the superintendent were not accepted. On 29 September one of the victim teachers gave a press interview at the Jeju Teachers' Union office. She said that early in the investigation she had seen on the student's phone material showing other teachers and current students, had made a list of the people and types of harm, and that the material shown to her at the police victim examination was considerably less than what she had seen; Yonhap-chain outlets quote her as saying the students she recognised numbered 10 to 20 and that a graduate had suffered worse deepfakes. She said investigators asked the school only to identify the perpetrator and never requested material to identify the students in the footage, and that the school sent parents a letter premised on there being no student victims. Police replied that phone forensics had been thorough, that every act beyond social norms had been identified and proven, and that one student victim had been confirmed, a student at a different school. The teachers were notified on 22 September that the case had gone to the prosecution and on 24 September that it had been sent to the court's juvenile division as a juvenile protection case, before they had submitted further evidence and a victim opinion. The teacher said the original complaint had also asked police to examine whether physical contact in 2025 was forcible molestation and whether repeated approaching and waiting in 2026 was stalking, and Halla Ilbo reports that such conduct is said to date from 2025. Yonhap-chain reports describe the charged victims as five teachers. The same day the education office briefed on legal-aid rules (up to 6.6 million won per instance when a teacher is sued, 3.3 million won per case when a teacher files a complaint; office lawyers cannot act as a teacher's private counsel), said it had linked the teachers to the national Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Center, announced an integrated support system through a hotline, and its section head said the office was sorry that early support had not been felt. The KTU Jeju branch (28 September) and the Jeju Teachers' Union (14 and 29 September) demand a victim-support system, per-teacher legal fees paid in advance and a dedicated support team. On 6 October 2026 Seogwipo Broadcasting reported, citing people in education and a tipster, that the education authority had finally rejected the victim teachers' application for lawyer fees for an additional criminal complaint, saying in a written opinion that with a police investigation already under way a further complaint could hardly stop or prevent the infringement of their teaching, so the support requirements were not met; critics contrast this with full legal-cost support in earlier sexual-offence cases.

Low Unidentified AI system

Derbyshire Police refer a senior detective to the police watchdog, which opens a gross misconduct investigation into the officer's use of AI

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said, as reported by the BBC on 10 August 2026, that Derbyshire Constabulary had made a voluntary conduct referral on 23 June 2026, following an internal review of an officer's use of artificial intelligence and concerns that it was not in line with guidance and conditions issued by the force. The IOPC decided the matter warranted an investigation, and the officer was served notice of an investigation for alleged gross misconduct. The BBC, citing the Financial Times, reported that a person familiar with events said the officer is a detective chief inspector alleged to have used AI to maintain decision logs, which investigators keep to record their reasoning and which can be disclosed to defence lawyers. The BBC describes the case as unrelated to the criminal investigation opened in June into another Derbyshire officer. The AI system and the outcome are not reported.

Medium Unidentified AI tool

Ninth Circuit fines and suspends two immigration lawyers over briefs with AI-hallucinated citations and denials of AI use; immigration board follows

On 3 June 2026 the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit fined immigration attorneys Mike Singh Sethi and William Rounds $2,500 each and suspended both from practice before the court for six months. Briefs filed in an asylum petition for review cited two cases that do not exist and attributed quotations to opinions that do not contain them. In a motion to correct, the attorneys called the errors typographical, and at oral argument Rounds twice said AI was not used. In their response to the court's order to show cause, they conceded that the errors were probably the product of unauthorised AI use by the firm's unlicensed brief writers and a failure to check citations. The court said the suspension was owed to their repeated failure of candour. The Board of Immigration Appeals then suspended Sethi from practice before the Board, the immigration courts and the Department of Homeland Security for six months, effective 13 June 2026, and designated that decision as a precedent on 1 October 2026.

If you or someone you know is struggling, free and confidential support is available. Find a helpline near you at Signpost.

Back to all incidents