What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Non-existent case cited in the Withdrawal Motion; the court could not locate it in any research tool and deemed it an AI hallucination. || Fabricated: Case Law | Non-existent case cited in the Appeal Motion; the court could not locate it and deemed it an AI hallucination. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Misrepresented for a proposition it does not support; the Court explained Degen concerns the rule of disentitlement, not the cited point. || Outdated Advice: Overturned Case Law | Relied upon despite being reversed and vacated; subsequent order expressly vacated the sanctions decision. || Outdated Advice: Overturned Case Law | Cited for immediate appealability under the collateral-order doctrine, but that proposition was impliedly overruled by Cunningham and Comuso; no longer good law for the point.

Details

AI UseCounsel admitted using ChatGPT to draft two motions (Motion to Withdraw and Motion for Leave to Appeal), without verifying the cases or researching the AI tool’s reliability.Hallucination Details2 Fake cases:McNally v. Eyeglass World, LLC, 897 F. Supp. 2d 1067 (D. Nev. 2012) — nonexistentBehm v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 460 F.3d 860 (7th Cir. 2006) — nonexistentMisused cases:Degen v. United States, cited for irrelevant propositionDow Chemical Canada Inc. v. HRD Corp., cited despite later vacaturEavenson, Auchmuty Greenwald v. Holtzman, cited despite being overruled by Third Circuit precedentRuling/SanctionThe Court sanctioned Counsel $2,500 payable to the court and ordered him to complete at least one hour of CLE on AI and legal ethics. The opinion emphasized that deterrence applied both specifically to Counsel and generally to the profession.Key Judicial ReasoningRule 11(b)(2) mandates reasonable inquiry into all legal contentions. No AI tool displaces the attorney’s personal duty. Novelty of AI tools is not a defense.

Sanction teardown · E.D. Pennsylvania, USA · 2025-02-27

Bunce v. Visual Technology Innovations (1)

What happened

In E.D. Pennsylvania, USA, a filing relied on ChatGPT to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:

Fabricated (Case Law)

Non-existent case cited in the Withdrawal Motion; the court could not locate it in any research tool and deemed it an AI hallucination.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Non-existent case cited in the Appeal Motion; the court could not locate it and deemed it an AI hallucination.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Misrepresented for a proposition it does not support; the Court explained Degen concerns the rule of disentitlement, not the cited point.
Outdated Advice (Overturned Case Law)

Relied upon despite being reversed and vacated; subsequent order expressly vacated the sanctions decision.
Outdated Advice (Overturned Case Law)

Cited for immediate appealability under the collateral-order doctrine, but that proposition was impliedly overruled by Cunningham and Comuso; no longer good law for the point.

Which AI tool

ChatGPT. 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

Monetary Sanction + Mandatory CLE on AI and Legal Ethics (monetary penalty: 2500 USD.)

Additional detail

AI UseCounsel admitted using ChatGPT to draft two motions (Motion to Withdraw and Motion for Leave to Appeal), without verifying the cases or researching the AI tool’s reliability.Hallucination Details2 Fake cases:McNally v. Eyeglass World, LLC, 897 F. Supp. 2d 1067 (D. Nev. 2012) — nonexistentBehm v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 460 F.3d 860 (7th Cir. 2006) — nonexistentMisused cases:Degen v. United States, cited for irrelevant propositionDow Chemical Canada Inc. v. HRD Corp., cited despite later vacaturEavenson, Auchmuty Greenwald v. Holtzman, cited despite being overruled by Third Circuit precedentRuling/SanctionThe Court sanctioned Counsel $2,500 payable to the court and ordered him to complete at least one hour of CLE on AI and legal ethics. The opinion emphasized that deterrence applied both specifically to Counsel and generally to the profession.Key Judicial ReasoningRule 11(b)(2) mandates reasonable inquiry into all legal contentions. No AI tool displaces the attorney’s personal duty. Novelty of AI tools is not a defense.

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/246/Bunce_v._Visual_Technology_Innovations_US_DC_Eastern_Pennsylvania_February_27_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).