{"meta":{"exportedAt":"2026-10-21T07:53:00.930Z","formatVersion":2,"selection":{"q":"regulator","system":"","harm":"","context":"","country":"","role":"","relation":"unknown","evidence":"","year":"2025","response":"","severity":"","verification":"","view":"incidents","sort":"added"},"totalIncidents":1,"coverage":{"cases":1,"countries":0,"languages":1,"unknownLocation":1,"locationPending":0,"unknownLanguage":0,"unknownDate":0,"lawsuits":0,"regulatory":0,"minors":0,"coreRelations":0,"contextualRelations":0,"mixedRelations":0,"unknownRelations":1,"relationPending":0,"relationUnknown":1},"countingNote":"Distinct public cases in this selection. People counts apply within individual cases only; cross-case person overlap has not been resolved. No population incidence estimate.","affectedCountNote":"Interpret person counts with affectedCountStatus and the reported effects. Unquantified zeros are placeholders, not a measured zero.","source":"AI incidents","publisher":"NOPE","url":"https://nope.net/incidents","license":"CC BY 4.0"},"incidents":[{"id":"2025-al-haroun-solicitor-referral-ai-citations","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"'reliance is placed on numerous authorities, many of which appear to be either completely fictitious or which, if they exist at all, do not contain the passages supposedly quoted from them'; 'lists forty five citations that had been put before the court. In eighteen instances, the case cited does not exist.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"Dias J's reasons of 9 May 2025, quoted in the judgment, record that correspondence with the court and the witness statements of the claimant and his solicitor relied on numerous authorities that appeared either completely fictitious or not to contain the passages quoted, and the judicial assistant's schedule lists 45 citations of which 18 referred to cases that do not exist.","causal_attribution":"Directly established by the court record (paragraphs 73 and 74). The count of citations is the schedule prepared by a judicial assistant as recorded by the court."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'He says that the citations were generated using publicly available artificial intelligence tools, legal search engines and online sources. He had complete (but he accepts misplaced) confidence in the authenticity of the material that he put before the court.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The claimant's witness statement, as recorded by the court, says the citations were generated using publicly available artificial intelligence tools, legal search engines and online sources, that he had misplaced confidence in their authenticity and that he did not intend to mislead.","causal_attribution":"The AI origin of the citations rests on the claimant's own statement, which the court records and does not contradict; no tool, prompt or output was inspected by the court or this review."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'He says that he relied on legal research that Mr Al-Haroun had conducted, without independently verifying the authorities. He accepts this was wrong.'; 'He has reported himself, and he will send them a copy of his witness statement.'; 'he has removed himself “from all litigated matters”'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The solicitor's witness statement, as recorded by the court, says he relied on the client's legal research without independently verifying the authorities, that he had reported himself to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and that he had removed himself from all litigated matters.","causal_attribution":"The solicitor's own account of his reliance and of his withdrawal, recorded by the court. The withdrawal is his own response; no employer or regulator decision is recorded."},{"id":"c4","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"'there was a lamentable failure to comply with the basic requirement to check the accuracy of material that is put before the court.'; 'The threshold for the initiation of contempt proceedings is, accordingly, not met.'; 'has referred himself to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We will also make a referral.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The Divisional Court found a lamentable failure by the solicitor and his firm to check the accuracy of material put before the court, was satisfied that he did not realise the true position, held that the threshold for contempt proceedings was not met, and said it would also refer him to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.","causal_attribution":"The findings and the referral are the court’s own decisions in paragraph 81. The court connects them to the failure to verify the client’s research; it does not attribute the dismissal of the underlying application to the citations."}],"effects":[{"label":"self-referral and court referral of a solicitor to his regulator, and his withdrawal from litigated matters, after unverified AI-generated citations were put before the court","claim_id":"c4","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Ayinde-v-London-Borough-of-Haringey-and-Al-Haroun-v-Qatar-National-Bank.pdf","kind":"court_judgment","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Approved judgment of 6 June 2025, fetched from judiciary.uk on 2026-10-07 (HTTP 200) and read in English from the pdftotext conversion; paragraphs 73 to 82 (the Al-Haroun case) and the front matter were inspected in full.","independence_group":"ewhc1383-alharoun"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["others_use"],"contexts":["justice","work"],"unknowns":["Which AI tools, search engines or online sources produced the citations, what was asked of them, what they returned and when; the claimant’s statement names none and the court did not examine them.","Where the research was done and where the solicitor practises; the judgment does not say, so event and affected-person countries are left empty.","The dates of the correspondence and witness statements that contained the citations, beyond their falling between the April 2025 order and the 9 May 2025 dismissal.","Any outcome of the self-referral or the court’s referral to the Solicitors Regulation Authority; nothing after 6 June 2025 was researched.","Whether the dismissal of the claimant’s application on 9 May 2025 or the underlying claim was affected by the citations; the judgment does not say."],"geography":{"basis":"The judgment was given by the High Court of England and Wales sitting in London (court_countries GB). Where the claimant generated the research and where the solicitor practises are not stated in the inspected judgment; the court’s seat is not used to locate the event or the affected person.","court_countries":["GB"],"event_countries":[],"affected_person_countries":[]},"publication":{"basis":"Published as a consequential-response case on the inspected approved judgment: the court records that the claimant said the citations were generated with publicly available AI tools, that the solicitor adopted them without checking, and that the court found a lamentable failure, declined contempt proceedings and said it would refer him to the regulator; the solicitor's own withdrawal from litigated matters and self-referral are recorded from his statement. The person relation is unknown because no source describes an output or action by an AI system toward the solicitor; the harm is the court's and the solicitor's own response to unverified AI-generated material having been filed. The solicitor and his firm are named in the public judgment but not in this record's narrative. No later disciplinary outcome is claimed.","reviewed_on":"2026-10-07"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"The claimant's witness statement, as recorded in paragraph 76 of the judgment, says the citations put before the court were generated using publicly available artificial intelligence tools, legal search engines and online sources, and the court treated these Hamid cases as instances of the misuse of artificial intelligence (paragraph 82). The AI output reached the harmed solicitor only through his client's research; no source describes any output, decision or claim by an AI system about the solicitor himself. The harm recorded here is the court's and the solicitor's own response to unverified AI-generated material having been filed, which is a consequential-response case under the charter, so the person relation is recorded as unknown with the consequential_response exemption. No tool, query or output is identified.","status":"supported"},"person_relations":["unknown"]},"name":"High Court refers a solicitor to his regulator after fictitious citations from research his client says was AI-generated were put before the court","summary":"A Divisional Court judgment of 6 June 2025 ([2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin)) records that, in a commercial claim against a Qatari bank, correspondence and witness statements filed by the claimant and his solicitor relied on numerous authorities that a judicial assistant's schedule found to be fictitious or misquoted: 45 citations, 18 of which referred to cases that do not exist. The claimant's witness statement says the citations were generated using publicly available artificial intelligence tools, legal search engines and online sources. The solicitor's statement says he relied on the client's research without verifying it, that he had reported himself to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and that he had removed himself from all litigated matters. The court found a lamentable failure to check the material, accepted that the solicitor did not realise the citations were false, held that the threshold for contempt proceedings was not met, and said it would also refer him to the regulator. The judgment does not record any later disciplinary outcome.","incidentDate":"2025-01-01","incidentKind":"bounded_series","incidentDatePrecision":"year","exposurePattern":"unknown","reportedDate":"2025-06-06","aiSystem":"Publicly available artificial intelligence tools, legal search engines and online sources, as described in the claimant's witness statement (no tool named)","aiProduct":"Unidentified legal research tool","severity":"medium","verificationStatus":"verified","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["professional_harm"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"The solicitor’s own statement records his withdrawal from all litigated matters and his self-referral to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the court said it would also refer him. No disciplinary penalty is recorded.","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"supported","participantUsersAffectedMin":0,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":1,"affectedCountStatus":"exact","affectedCountEvidence":"One person, the solicitor whose withdrawal from litigated matters and regulatory referral the judgment records. His firm is also referred but is not a person. The claimant, who used the tools, is not reported to have suffered a consequence attributed to the AI output beyond the dismissal of an application that the judgment does not connect to the citations, and the barrister was not referred. Exact 1.","victimAgeRange":"unknown","platformType":"assistant","outcomeStatus":"unknown","primarySourceUrl":"https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Ayinde-v-London-Borough-of-Haringey-and-Al-Haroun-v-Qatar-National-Bank.pdf","primarySourceLabel":"Ayinde v London Borough of Haringey and Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin), judgment of 6 June 2025","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-29T10:28:54.240186+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-10-07T03:25:09.967874+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["historical-2025","legal","hallucinated-citations"]}]}