What was hallucinated

Misrepresented: Case Law | The pleading stated that the Vestre Landsret judgment carefully considered deportation, conducted a proportionality assessment, and applied ECHR Article 8. The judgment did not address deportation, conduct such an assessment, or mention Article 8. || Misrepresented: Case Law | The pleading described the judgment as a deportation case establishing that violence involving dangerous objects need not lead to deportation. The judgment did not concern deportation and did not indicate that the defendant was a foreign national subject to deportation. || Misrepresented: Case Law | The pleading characterized the case as involving violence by a foreign national and an ECHR Article 8 family-life analysis. The judgment concerned theft, receiving stolen goods, and weapons-law violations, and addressed EU rules rather than Article 8. || Misrepresented: Case Law | The pleading stated that the Supreme Court considered deportation under ECHR Article 8 and relied on European Court of Human Rights case law and the Üner criteria. The judgment mentioned none of these and instead applied EU law. || Misrepresented: Case Law | The pleading stated that the case concerned a defendant convicted of violence whose deportation would separate the defendant from a child, and that the child’s interests outweighed deportation. Neither defendant had a child; one defendant’s girlfriend was pregnant, and the judgment did not rely on ECHR Article 8 or the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. || Misrepresented: Case Law | The pleading stated that the defendant had long-term residence, children, family, and a social network in Denmark, making deportation disproportionate. The defendant was instead a Slovak tourist who had never lived in Denmark; deportation was rejected in the context of a single instance of simple violence. || Misrepresented: Case Law | The pleading presented Üner as holding that a person with strong ties to the host country may not be deported despite serious criminality. The judgment was described by the expert as establishing the opposite proposition: deportation may be permissible even where the person has strong ties.

Details

As reported in local media (see here), the defense lawyer submitted a pleading to the Danish Supreme Court containing inaccurate summaries of seven real judgments. The errors included attributing nonexistent deportation and human-rights analyses to cases, changing the factual circumstances of cases, and presenting Üner v. the Netherlands as supporting the opposite proposition from its actual holding. The lawyer acknowledged that an employee used ChatGPT to prepare case summaries and accepted responsibility for failing to verify them. The article reports no disciplinary sanction or fine. Højesteret indicated that its judges independently study and decide cases and are not dependent on parties’ written submissions.

Sanction teardown · Højesteret (Supreme Court), Denmark · 2025-10-29

Case 9/2025

What happened

In Højesteret (Supreme Court), Denmark, a filing relied on ChatGPT to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:

Misrepresented (Case Law)

The pleading stated that the Vestre Landsret judgment carefully considered deportation, conducted a proportionality assessment, and applied ECHR Article 8. The judgment did not address deportation, conduct such an assessment, or mention Article 8.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

The pleading described the judgment as a deportation case establishing that violence involving dangerous objects need not lead to deportation. The judgment did not concern deportation and did not indicate that the defendant was a foreign national subject to deportation.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

The pleading characterized the case as involving violence by a foreign national and an ECHR Article 8 family-life analysis. The judgment concerned theft, receiving stolen goods, and weapons-law violations, and addressed EU rules rather than Article 8.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

The pleading stated that the Supreme Court considered deportation under ECHR Article 8 and relied on European Court of Human Rights case law and the Üner criteria. The judgment mentioned none of these and instead applied EU law.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

The pleading stated that the case concerned a defendant convicted of violence whose deportation would separate the defendant from a child, and that the child’s interests outweighed deportation. Neither defendant had a child; one defendant’s girlfriend was pregnant, and the judgment did not rely on ECHR Article 8 or the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

The pleading stated that the defendant had long-term residence, children, family, and a social network in Denmark, making deportation disproportionate. The defendant was instead a Slovak tourist who had never lived in Denmark; deportation was rejected in the context of a single instance of simple violence.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

The pleading presented Üner as holding that a person with strong ties to the host country may not be deported despite serious criminality. The judgment was described by the expert as establishing the opposite proposition: deportation may be permissible even where the person has strong ties.

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

Not specified in source record.

Additional detail

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://vidensbasen.anklagemyndigheden.dk/h/6dfa19d8-18cc-47d6-b4c4-3bd07bc15ec0/VB/0b4d798d-16ce-4505-8e5f-39ffe2073328#i5982b14c0, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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