San Francisco federal judge orders sworn explanation after a lawyer files a motion he says Claude Console drafted with three phantom quotations
In the federal lawsuit over the Trump administration's mass layoffs (AFGE v. Trump, Northern District of California), a partner at Binnall Law Group filed an emergency motion on the night of 6 May 2026 to quash a deposition subpoena directed at a former Homeland Security official the firm represents. In a declaration filed on 15 May under the court's 13 May order, the partner said he had used Claude Console, an enterprise AI platform, to create an initial draft, that an associate told him she had checked the citations, and that he did not double-check the quotations. He was explaining under oath, at the court's instruction, how three phantom quotations ended up in the motion. He apologised to the court and opposing counsel and attached a corrected version. The firm's founding partner declared that firm policy prohibits using tools like Claude for legal drafting, that the error breached its policies and training, and that the firm had opened an internal investigation. Whether Judge Susan Illston imposed sanctions is not reported in the sources read.
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 18/10/2026