What was hallucinated

Misrepresented: Case Law | Cited PGBA, LLC v. United States to argue procurement structure favored incumbents and rendered participation illusory; Board noted PGBA is a bid protest decision about award protest procedures and does not support Endure's contract argument. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Cited Russell Corp. v. United States as if it held that an implied-in-fact contract existed when government directed procurement terms; Board noted Russell in fact found no contract and ruled against the contractor. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a nonexistent decision, "BMS, Inc. v. United States, 12 Cl. Ct. 33 (1987)"; Board found the case does not exist and that the nearby reporter citation corresponds to Johns-Manville, which does not support Endure's asserted propositions. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Attributed supportive legal statements to the fake BMS citation and to Johns-Manville that were actually either dicta or derived from the contractor's proposed findings; Johns-Manville ultimately ruled against the contractor. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Cited T. Brown Constructors, Inc. v. Pena to support that the government cannot impose procurement controls while denying a contract; Board observed T. Brown involved an existing express contract and contract interpretation, not a denial of contract.

Sanction teardown · ASBCA, USA · 2026-03-23

Endure Industries, Inc. v. Defense Health Agency

What happened

In ASBCA, 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:

Misrepresented (Case Law)

Cited PGBA, LLC v. United States to argue procurement structure favored incumbents and rendered participation illusory; Board noted PGBA is a bid protest decision about award protest procedures and does not support Endure's contract argument.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Cited Russell Corp. v. United States as if it held that an implied-in-fact contract existed when government directed procurement terms; Board noted Russell in fact found no contract and ruled against the contractor.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Cited a nonexistent decision, "BMS, Inc. v. United States, 12 Cl. Ct. 33 (1987)"; Board found the case does not exist and that the nearby reporter citation corresponds to Johns-Manville, which does not support Endure's asserted propositions.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Attributed supportive legal statements to the fake BMS citation and to Johns-Manville that were actually either dicta or derived from the contractor's proposed findings; Johns-Manville ultimately ruled against the contractor.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Cited T. Brown Constructors, Inc. v. Pena to support that the government cannot impose procurement controls while denying a contract; Board observed T. Brown involved an existing express contract and contract interpretation, not a denial of contract.

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

Warning

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/1981/1776341487278.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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