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ByoPlanet International v. Johansson and Gilstrap

Court
S.D. Florida
Jurisdiction
USA
Decided
2025-08-01
AI tool
ChatGPT
Outcome
Cases dismissed without prejudice, attorney ordered to pay defendants' attorney fees, referred to Florida Bar.
Monetary penalty
85567 USD

What was hallucinated

False Quotes: Case Law | Fabricated Scalia quote attributed to Liteky; court verified the quote does not appear in the opinion. || Fabricated: Case Law | Complaint cited a non-existent case; court noted the reporter citation corresponds to Roberts v. State, not Merrill Lynch v. Hagerty. || Fabricated: Case Law | Response cited a non-existent S.D. Fla. case; citation actually points to a Louisiana case. || False Quotes: Case Law | Quoted Hood for a Rule 11 proposition not found in the case; court confirmed the quote does not appear and the case does not discuss 'clerical errors' or 'bad faith.' || Fabricated: Case Law | Appeal brief cited a non-existent Castillo decision. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Misstated Castillo as holding that knowingly false testimony by an agent/expert warranted reopening judgments; court noted real Castillo decisions do not support this. || Fabricated: Case Law | Appeal brief cited a non-existent Chowdhury decision. || Fabricated: Case Law | Appeal brief cited a non-existent Nabulsi decision. || Fabricated: Case Law | Appeal brief cited a non-existent Olson decision. || Fabricated: Case Law | Appeal brief cited a non-existent Perkins decision. || Fabricated: Case Law | Response cited a non-existent Fourth DCA decision; opposing party flagged the fabrication. || Fabricated: Case Law | Response cited a non-existent Kaplan decision. || False Quotes: Case Law | Motion cited Ehlers for a Rule 60(b) 'liberally construed to do substantial justice' quote that does not appear in the case. || False Quotes: Case Law | Show-cause response attributed a bad-faith requirement quote to Purchasing Power that does not appear in the opinion. || False Quotes: Case Law | Show-cause response quoted Carroll as declining sanctions for incorrect citations absent intent to mislead; the quoted language does not appear.

Details

In May, the court asked Counsel to show cause why they should not be sanctioned for filing briefs with hallucinations - especially since they continued filing hallucinated submissions after being warned about it.In their Answer, Counsel revealed that "specific citations and quotes in question were inadvertently derived from internal draft text prepared using generative AI research tools designed to expedite legal research and brief drafting".In the Order, the court noted that Counsel "was not candid to the Court when confronted about his use of AI, stating that some of these documents were “prepared under time constraints,” when he had nearly two more weeks before the deadline to submit his responses." The judge was also unimpressed by Counsel's attempt to shift the blame to a paralegal.Finally, in the fee dispute order, the court cited this database to point out that its approach to award costs and fees was appropriate, especially given the egregiousness of the claimant's conduct in this case. The judge also took into account "the significant, if indirect, monetary losses that may arise from nonmonetary sanctions in other cases, such as loss of business and loss of reputation, or the monetary loss borne by a client when a motion or even an entire case is adversely decided due to counsel’s misuse of AI."

Sanction teardown · S.D. Florida, USA · 2025-08-01

ByoPlanet International v. Johansson and Gilstrap

What happened

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

  • False Quotes (Case Law)
    Fabricated Scalia quote attributed to Liteky; court verified the quote does not appear in the opinion.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Complaint cited a non-existent case; court noted the reporter citation corresponds to Roberts v. State, not Merrill Lynch v. Hagerty.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Response cited a non-existent S.D. Fla. case; citation actually points to a Louisiana case.
  • False Quotes (Case Law)
    Quoted Hood for a Rule 11 proposition not found in the case; court confirmed the quote does not appear and the case does not discuss 'clerical errors' or 'bad faith.'
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Appeal brief cited a non-existent Castillo decision.
  • Misrepresented (Case Law)
    Misstated Castillo as holding that knowingly false testimony by an agent/expert warranted reopening judgments; court noted real Castillo decisions do not support this.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Appeal brief cited a non-existent Chowdhury decision.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Appeal brief cited a non-existent Nabulsi decision.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Appeal brief cited a non-existent Olson decision.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Appeal brief cited a non-existent Perkins decision.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Response cited a non-existent Fourth DCA decision; opposing party flagged the fabrication.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Response cited a non-existent Kaplan decision.
  • False Quotes (Case Law)
    Motion cited Ehlers for a Rule 60(b) 'liberally construed to do substantial justice' quote that does not appear in the case.
  • False Quotes (Case Law)
    Show-cause response attributed a bad-faith requirement quote to Purchasing Power that does not appear in the opinion.
  • False Quotes (Case Law)
    Show-cause response quoted Carroll as declining sanctions for incorrect citations absent intent to mislead; the quoted language does not appear.

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

Cases dismissed without prejudice, attorney ordered to pay defendants' attorney fees, referred to Florida Bar. (monetary penalty: 85567 USD.)

Additional detail

In May, the court asked Counsel to show cause why they should not be sanctioned for filing briefs with hallucinations - especially since they continued filing hallucinated submissions after being warned about it.In their Answer, Counsel revealed that "specific citations and quotes in question were inadvertently derived from internal draft text prepared using generative AI research tools designed to expedite legal research and brief drafting".In the Order, the court noted that Counsel "was not candid to the Court when confronted about his use of AI, stating that some of these documents were “prepared under time constraints,” when he had nearly two more weeks before the deadline to submit his responses." The judge was also unimpressed by Counsel's attempt to shift the blame to a paralegal.Finally, in the fee dispute order, the court cited this database to point out that its approach to award costs and fees was appropriate, especially given the egregiousness of the claimant's conduct in this case. The judge also took into account "the significant, if indirect, monetary losses that may arise from nonmonetary sanctions in other cases, such as loss of business and loss of reputation, or the monetary loss borne by a client when a motion or even an entire case is adversely decided due to counsel’s misuse of AI."

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/985/ByoPlanet_International_v._Johansson_and_Gilstrap_USA_1_August_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/985/ByoPlanet_International_v._Johansson_and_Gilstrap_USA_1_August_2025.pdf

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