Sanction teardown · SC New York, USA · 2025-07-16
Augustin v. Formula 3 Brooklyn Inc.
What happened
In SC New York, USA, a filing relied on an unnamed/unconfirmed AI tool to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:
-
Fabricated (Case Law)Defendants re-cited the nonexistent 'Graziano' in Point III-F and submitted Exhibit M stating a contradictory 'Graziano' holding; court confirmed no such case exists.
-
Misrepresented (Case Law)Bellefonte misused to argue that a manager's control undermines employer liability; the case actually addressed summary judgment on alleged fraudulent inducement.
-
Misrepresented (Case Law)Y.A. v Conair mischaracterized as addressing time-barred claims; it actually concerns denial of leave to amend an answer.
-
Fabricated (Case Law)Only 'Perez' cited with no identifying details; court could not locate any such case and questioned whether it exists.
-
Fabricated (Case Law)Nonexistent 'Graziano v. County of Nassau' cited to support 'Discovery cannot resuscitate claims'; the citation 202 AD3d 707, 708 actually corresponds to People v Devore (a criminal case), and no Graziano case exists.
Which AI tool
an unnamed/unconfirmed AI tool. Note: Charlotin's public database records tool attribution only where a court order, brief, or reporting on the matter states it explicitly; "unidentified" or "implied" means the record indicates AI use but does not name a specific product — we do not guess.
Outcome
Defendants ordered to comply with AI rules; potential financial sanctions pending hearing.
How Citation Safe would have caught this
Citation Safe runs three deterministic layers before a brief is filed: (1) does the citation exist against CourtListener's database of published opinions, (2) if quoted, does that exact language appear in the source, (3) does the cited case actually support the proposition it is cited for. Fabricated case citations fail Layer 1. Fabricated or misattributed quotations fail Layer 2 even when the underlying case is real. Misrepresented holdings — a real case cited for a proposition it does not support — are the target of Layer 3. None of these checks involve asking another language model whether the citation looks right; they are lookups and text-matches against the actual source, which is why a hallucinated citation has to survive a direct lookup against the authoritative source — not another model's opinion — to earn a VERIFIED stamp; our measured false-verify rate is published live at /quality.
Check a brief before you file it → · See our live false-verify rate
Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/635/Augustin_v._Formula_3_Brooklyn_Inc._USA_16_July_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).