1 Mar 2023 to 22 Jun 2023Event location unknownChatGPT
In a passenger's personal-injury suit against the airline Avianca in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, an opposition brief filed on 1 March 2023 cited judicial opinions that did not exist. The court found that the lawyer who did the research had used ChatGPT, which fabricated the cases, and that when he asked the chatbot whether one of them was real it replied that it had supplied real authorities that could be found on legal databases. On 22 June 2023 the court found bad faith by the two lawyers, based on their conduct after the citations were questioned, and imposed a USD 5,000 penalty jointly on them and their firm, together with letters to the client and to each judge falsely named as an author of the fake opinions.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources · Added 28/10/2026
21 Oct 2025 to 3 Apr 2026United StatesCoCounsel
In a published opinion of 3 April 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit addressed the briefs a lawyer appointed under the Criminal Justice Act had filed for an indigent defendant appealing a sentencing enhancement in a drug-trafficking case. The court noticed that the principal brief's file name was 'CoCounsel Skill Results' and found three quotations that appear in no legal authority and misstatements of two precedents. The lawyer admitted that a staff member had used Westlaw's CoCounsel to create the first draft, that he repeated the process for the reply, and that the false quotations came from artificial intelligence he did not verify. The court denied him compensation for the appeal, referred the opinion for possible disciplinary proceedings and to the Kentucky Bar Association, and by separate order removed him, locked his briefs and ordered replacement counsel to file new ones, which it said further delayed resolution of the defendant's appeal. The court acknowledged his candour and his 40 years without discipline.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 19/10/2026
15 Jul 2026United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
In a published opinion of July 2026, the Arizona Court of Appeals found that a self-represented appellant's opening brief in a probate dispute contained eight citations, six of them deficient, including two cases that do not exist. In a written explanation and at a hearing on the false citations he acknowledged relying on generative AI to write the brief and said he did nothing to verify the citations. The court struck the inaccurate and false citations, rejected the appeal because no supportive authority remained, held that citing a hallucinated case is sanctionable whether or not it is intended, and ordered him to pay the share of the other party's attorney's fees traceable to the fake citations. Because he said he did not intend to deceive and is not legally trained, the court chose this narrow sanction over contempt or fines. It described the opinion as the first published Arizona ruling on generative AI hallucinations in filings.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026
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
31 Jan 2025 to 12 Dec 2025United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
On 12 December 2025 the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon dismissed with prejudice the claims of plaintiffs in a family dispute over their late mother's estate and family property, as a sanction for what the court called their misuse of generative artificial intelligence, and found their continual violations of the court's Local Rules an additional basis for the dismissal. Three of the plaintiffs' summary-judgment briefs cited fifteen nonexistent cases and fabricated quotations attributed to eight real authorities. The plaintiffs had said the inaccurate citations came from reliance on an automated legal citation tool. The court found that the plaintiffs shared responsibility with their lead lawyer and that one plaintiff, a frequent self-represented litigant, was likely the person who used AI to draft the briefs. It struck the briefs, ordered the lead lawyer to pay $15,500 to the court and awarded the defendants their fees. In March 2026 it set those fees at $94,704.38, ordering the lead lawyer to pay 85% and local counsel 15%. In June 2026 it denied the plaintiffs' motion to reconsider a later ruling for the defendants on a counterclaim.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026
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
3 Jun 2026United StatesUnidentified AI tool
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.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources · 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
2 Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
On 2 October 2026 the Nebraska Supreme Court struck the appellate brief of a self-represented party appealing a contempt order in his divorce case because the brief contained numerous citations to fictitious cases and misstatements of law, which the court said were the result of his admitted use of generative artificial intelligence. The court held that self-represented litigants are held to the same standard as attorneys and that submitting a brief relying on nonexistent authority is an abuse of the judicial process worthy of sanctions. Citing the novelty of the issue for self-represented parties, it stopped short of dismissing the appeal and reviewed only for plain error, finding none and affirming the district court's contempt finding, its sanction of 90 days' incarceration with purge conditions, a temporary reduction of his parenting time and an attorney-fee award. The court warned that in future cases dismissal of the appeal may follow. The opinion does not name the AI tool.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 1 source · Added 09/10/2026
Mar 2025United StatesJewish Onliner (suspected)
In March 2025 Yale placed a Yale Law School scholar, who was deputy director of a Yale Law School project, on administrative leave and barred the scholar from campus. The New York Times reports the decision came three days after a news site described as powered at least in part by artificial intelligence published a story on the scholar's connections to Samidoun, a group on a US sanctions list. Inside Higher Ed and Middle East Eye identify the site as Jewish Onliner. The scholar's lawyer says Yale's general counsel named the article as the trigger of the investigation. The scholar told the Times of not being a member of any organization that would violate US law, and the lawyer says the scholar is not a member of Samidoun. A Yale Law School representative told The National that placing an employee on temporary administrative leave while a review is conducted is the appropriate process and that the scholar's short-term position was due to expire the following month. The site says humans fact-check and that AI tools play a significant role in its work. The inspected sources do not show that AI produced the article.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Apr 2025 to May 2025Event location unknownCoCounsel, Westlaw Precision and Gemini (reported)
In an order dated 5 May 2025 and filed on 6 May in Lacey v. State Farm (C.D. Cal.), a special master struck the claimant's supplemental briefs and denied the discovery relief she sought after her lawyers filed briefs built on unverified AI-generated legal research: about nine of 27 citations were wrong and at least two cited authorities did not exist. One lawyer's sworn declaration says the outline he circulated relied on generative AI features in CoCounsel, Westlaw Precision and Google Gemini, and that he could not tell whether particular errors came from his transcription or from a tool; co-counsel at the second firm say they used no AI tools and did not know AI had been used. The order makes the two firms jointly pay $31,100, states the client was not at fault and will not bear the awards, and imposes no penalty on individual lawyers.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
Nov 2023VietnamUnidentified AI writing tool and Turnitin (reported)
In November 2023 a student at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Foreign Languages and Information Technology (HUFLIT) wrote on the university's anonymous confessions page that a writing-course essay had been returned with 50 percent of the marks deducted because the lecturer found it had been written with AI. The student said the lecturer had warned that AI-written essays would be treated as plagiarism if detected, had not expected detection, and learned from the lecturer that Vietnamese-to-English translation software could also be counted as AI use when checked with specialised plagiarism software; the student did not know whether the course could still be passed. The vice-rector told Tuoi Tre that the lecturer had told students before the assignment not to use AI applications, that the course tests independent writing, that using an AI support tool breached academic-integrity rules, and that the deduction was appropriate, while noting the university had no formal document on sanctions for AI use. A university representative told Thanh Nien and Dan Tri that the university does not ban AI but requires transparency about tools used, uses paid AI-detection services when necessary, and had not received a formal complaint from the student; a later report said the university had bought Turnitin licences for lecturers to check AI use in essays.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 20/09/2026