What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Legal Norm | Municipality relied on and quoted sections (2.1, 2.3, 4.1) of a non-existent Ministry of Education Director-General Circular 5783/4(a) (1.9.2022); court found the circular and the quoted passages do not exist. || Fabricated: Case Law | Municipality cited 'Family Appeal (ש"מע) (Center) 31135-07-20' for a supposed determination about 'center of life' and third-party rights; court inspected the judgment and found no such wording or determination. || Fabricated: Case Law | Municipality cited 'ש"מע (Tel Aviv) 13008-02-21' as holding that custody/parental responsibility is irrelevant to eligibility absent an official dual address; court found the judgment contains no discussion of dual address or such holdings. || Fabricated: Case Law | Municipality quoted a PD citation (PD 47(5) 672, 679 (1993)) and ascribed a quotation about litigation costs to it; court found the cited judgment/quotation does not exist. || Fabricated: Case Law | Municipality relied on citation 'מ"עע2398/12' (dated and respondent details inconsistent) for a procedural-conduct holding; court found the reference and the stated determination were incorrect/mismatched.

Details

The municipality relied on non-existent legal authorities (an invented Ministry of Education Director-General Circular and several fabricated or incorrectly quoted court decisions) in its reply to the appellant and in court pleadings. The Supreme Court found these to be the product of uncontrolled AI use, accepted the appeal on that basis and ordered costs of 30,000 ILS against the municipality.

Sanction teardown · Supreme Court, Israel · 2026-03-22

Ben-Cohen v. Municipality of Ramat Gan

What happened

In Supreme Court, Israel, 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 (Legal Norm)

Municipality relied on and quoted sections (2.1, 2.3, 4.1) of a non-existent Ministry of Education Director-General Circular 5783/4(a) (1.9.2022); court found the circular and the quoted passages do not exist.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Municipality cited 'Family Appeal (ש"מע) (Center) 31135-07-20' for a supposed determination about 'center of life' and third-party rights; court inspected the judgment and found no such wording or determination.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Municipality cited 'ש"מע (Tel Aviv) 13008-02-21' as holding that custody/parental responsibility is irrelevant to eligibility absent an official dual address; court found the judgment contains no discussion of dual address or such holdings.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Municipality quoted a PD citation (PD 47(5) 672, 679 (1993)) and ascribed a quotation about litigation costs to it; court found the cited judgment/quotation does not exist.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Municipality relied on citation 'מ"עע2398/12' (dated and respondent details inconsistent) for a procedural-conduct holding; court found the reference and the stated determination were incorrect/mismatched.

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

Adverse Costs Order (monetary penalty: 30000 ILS.)

Additional detail

The municipality relied on non-existent legal authorities (an invented Ministry of Education Director-General Circular and several fabricated or incorrectly quoted court decisions) in its reply to the appellant and in court pleadings. The Supreme Court found these to be the product of uncontrolled AI use, accepted the appeal on that basis and ordered costs of 30,000 ILS against the municipality.

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/1788/Ben_Cohen_Israel_22_March_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).