5 Feb 2026 to 9 Oct 2026United StatesvLex, Paxton AI and NotebookLM (reported)
In a federal trademark suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the court on 5 February 2026 struck a company defendant's motion papers and entered default judgment against it as a sanction on its lawyer, after his filings repeatedly cited nonexistent cases and misattributed quotations. The lawyer said he had found and cite-checked cases with AI tools (vLex and Paxton AI) and used NotebookLM to review a later submission; the court rejected his explanations and found he acted in bad faith. On 9 October 2026 the court described the citations as produced by generative AI and ordered the lawyer to pay $38,877.59 in fees and costs to the firm of a co-defendant's former lawyer, who had reported the false citations to the court.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
8 Oct 2026IsraelUnidentified AI tool
On 8 October 2026 the Magistrates' Court in Nof HaGalil-Nazareth, Israel, struck from the file a banking expert's opinion that a defendant in a civil negligence suit had filed, finding that the heart of the opinion and its annexes rested on clear 'AI hallucinations': a Supreme Court ruling the court could not locate, a book it could not find and statutory sections quoted with text the statute does not contain. The court also refused the defendant's request to amend her third-party notice against two banks, partly because the amendment relied on the struck opinion, and ordered her to pay costs of 2,500 shekels to each bank. No AI tool is named, and the decision records no response from the expert.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026
24 Apr 2026United StatesUnidentified AI research tool
On 24 April 2026 the Supreme Court of Alabama dismissed an appeal by two siblings in a family dispute over living trusts because their lawyer, W. Perry Hall, had filed briefs in which most of the legal authorities were misquoted or did not exist. The court said they appeared to be AI hallucinations, and at a show-cause hearing in February 2026 Hall admitted that many authorities did not exist and that he had improperly used AI to obtain them. The court ordered Hall to pay the opposing party's fees and costs of $17,200 and double appeal costs, barred him from filing in the court without a co-signing attorney and referred him to the Alabama State Bar. It said the dismissal was imposed as a sanction because of the particularly egregious facts. One justice, concurring in part and dissenting in part, objected to dismissing the appeal as a sanction for the lawyer's conduct but would have affirmed the judgment against the clients on the merits.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 1 source · Added 14/10/2026
15 Dec 2025 to 1 Oct 2026CanadaUnidentified AI drafting tool
On 1 October 2026 the Quebec Court of Appeal ordered court costs against a self-represented appellant in a family-law contempt appeal as a sanction for appeal filings that, in the court's description, he had written with artificial intelligence and that contained two references to non-existent judgments and one inaccurate reference to a cited paragraph. The court held that AI may be used to draft appeal filings only if the litigant verifies the authorities, found that he had breached the Chief Justice's notice on AI use, and described his conduct as negligence rather than bad faith. It rejected the respondent's request for a separate $10,000 sanction and, for reasons unrelated to AI, reduced the contempt penalty imposed at first instance. The decision does not name the AI tool.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026
17 Sept 2025 to 21 Sept 2026United KingdomChatGPT
A published Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) decision issued on 21 September 2026 records that the grounds of appeal and skeleton argument in a Namibian national's protection appeal were produced by a paralegal at her then solicitors using ChatGPT. The tribunal recorded her counsel's acceptance that the grounds cited fake cases, quoted passages absent from those judgments and attributed to the First-tier judge sentences he never wrote, and itself called one purported quotation pure invention. The September 2025 error-of-law hearing was adjourned, and the appellant later withdrew three of her four original grounds. The tribunal allowed an amended version of her one surviving ground but found that it disclosed no error of law. It refused her permission to add two new grounds, holding that she should not be allowed to advance entirely new grounds, or replace grounds riddled with misrepresentations, so long after the time limit, and in the alternative found those grounds without merit. It directed the Home Office to file any wasted costs application against the firm. The decision states that two individuals have reported themselves to the Solicitors Regulation Authority; the Law Society Gazette reported the decision on 8 October 2026.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/10/2026
1 Nov 2024 to 28 Jan 2026United StatesTurnitin AI-text detector
Orion Newby, an Adelphi University first-year student with language and auditory processing disabilities, received a zero in November 2024 on a World Civilizations paper after the professor suspected it was AI-generated and the university relied in part on AI-detection software; he was ordered to attend a plagiarism workshop and his appeal was denied, leaving him one finding from suspension or expulsion. Newby — who had written the paper with 15-20 hours of tutor support through the university's own disability program — said the detectors flagged his citations, and two other detectors scored the paper as human. After the family sued, New York State Supreme Court Judge Randy Sue Marber in Nassau County ruled on 28 January 2026 that Adelphi's finding and its denial of his appeal were 'without valid basis and devoid of reason' and ordered his record expunged. The family spent six figures on legal costs.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 15/09/2026