Sanction teardown · W.D. Michigan, USA · 2026-03-11
Checks Aciek Ateny Nai v. National Asset Mortgage, LLC, et al.
What happened
In W.D. Michigan, 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:
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Fabricated (Legal Norm)Counsel for NAM included a fabricated quotation altering the language of 12 U.S.C. § 2614 in NAM's Brief in Support of its Motion for Summary Judgment (ECF No. 117); quotation materially changed statute's plain meaning.
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Fabricated (Legal Norm)Same fabricated quotation of 12 U.S.C. § 2614 repeated in NAM's Response in Opposition to Plaintiff's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment (ECF No. 132); Plaintiff had previously notified NAM of the inaccuracy.
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
Order to Show Cause satisfied; court declined to impose Rule 11 sanctions.
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/1649/Nai_v._National_Asset_Mortgage_USA_11_March_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).