What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Exhibits & Submissions | Defendant's briefing quoted a forum-selection clause that does not appear in the parties' contract or any filed papers; the actual clause is at Doc. 11-1 ¶ 12. || Fabricated: Case Law | Defendant cited a non-existent case, Hogan v. Allstate Insurance Co.; Westlaw citation returns no case, no CM/ECF case exists, docket format is invalid for D. Kan., and no judge with initials JPM sits in the district.

Details

In the November 2024 Show Cause Order, Judge Robinson noted that: "First, the briefing does not cite the forum-selection clause from the contract between the parties; instead, it cites and quotes a forum-selection clause that appears nowhere in the papers submitted by the parties. Second, Defendant’s reply brief includes a citation, Hogan v. Allstate Insurance Co., No. 19-CV-00262-JPM, 2020 WL 1882334 (D. Kan. Apr. 15, 2020), in which the court purportedly “transferred a case to the Southern District of Texas because the majority of the witnesses were located in Texas. The court found that the burden on the witnesses outweighed the convenience of litigating the case in Kansas.” As far as the Court can tell, this case does not exist. The Westlaw database number pulls up no case; the Court has found no case in CM/ECF between the parties “Hogan” and “Allstate Insurance Co.” Moreover, docket numbers in this district have at least four digits—not three—after the case-type designation, and there is no judge in this district with the initials “JPM.”"During the show cause hearing (Transcript), Counsel apologised and pledged to reimburse the other side's costs, as well as his client's.

Sanction teardown · D. Kansas, USA · 2024-11-14

Berry v. Stewart

What happened

In D. Kansas, 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 (Exhibits & Submissions)

Defendant's briefing quoted a forum-selection clause that does not appear in the parties' contract or any filed papers; the actual clause is at Doc. 11-1 ¶ 12.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Defendant cited a non-existent case, Hogan v. Allstate Insurance Co.; Westlaw citation returns no case, no CM/ECF case exists, docket format is invalid for D. Kan., and no judge with initials JPM sits in the district.

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

At hearing, Counsel pledged to reimburse other side and his client

Additional detail

In the November 2024 Show Cause Order, Judge Robinson noted that: "First, the briefing does not cite the forum-selection clause from the contract between the parties; instead, it cites and quotes a forum-selection clause that appears nowhere in the papers submitted by the parties. Second, Defendant’s reply brief includes a citation, Hogan v. Allstate Insurance Co., No. 19-CV-00262-JPM, 2020 WL 1882334 (D. Kan. Apr. 15, 2020), in which the court purportedly “transferred a case to the Southern District of Texas because the majority of the witnesses were located in Texas. The court found that the burden on the witnesses outweighed the convenience of litigating the case in Kansas.” As far as the Court can tell, this case does not exist. The Westlaw database number pulls up no case; the Court has found no case in CM/ECF between the parties “Hogan” and “Allstate Insurance Co.” Moreover, docket numbers in this district have at least four digits—not three—after the case-type designation, and there is no judge in this district with the initials “JPM.”"During the show cause hearing (Transcript), Counsel apologised and pledged to reimburse the other side's costs, as well as his client's.

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.

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Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/465/Berry_v._Stewart_D._Kansas_14_November_2024.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).