What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Applicant provided 'IOOF Holdings Ltd v TPT Patrol Pty Ltd [2019] FCAFC 115' as an authority restraining a firm; court found no such case under that name and the citation [2019] FCAFC 115 corresponds to Calidad Pty Ltd v Seiko Epson Corp, which does not concern a restraint application. || Fabricated: Case Law | Applicant cited 'Quinert v National Australia Bank Limited (2019)' as a restraint authority; court found no record of any case by that name or citation and treated it as fabricated. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Applicant relied on Westpac Banking Corporation v Lenthall [2018] FCA 1422 and described it as a case restraining MinterEllison; court found the case exists but does not concern a restraint of solicitors and was misdescribed by the applicant.

Details

Applicant (unrepresented) provided a list of 24 authorities claimed to show instances where MinterEllison had been restrained. Court's associate and judge found the list contained fabricated or misdescribed citations; judge characterised the provision of those authorities as an egregious instance of misleading the court but did not impose professional sanctions. Restraint application dismissed on merits.

Sanction teardown · Family Court, Australia · 2024-02-27

Finch v The Heat Group

What happened

In Family Court, Australia, 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:

Fabricated (Case Law)

Applicant provided 'IOOF Holdings Ltd v TPT Patrol Pty Ltd [2019] FCAFC 115' as an authority restraining a firm; court found no such case under that name and the citation [2019] FCAFC 115 corresponds to Calidad Pty Ltd v Seiko Epson Corp, which does not concern a restraint application.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Applicant cited 'Quinert v National Australia Bank Limited (2019)' as a restraint authority; court found no record of any case by that name or citation and treated it as fabricated.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Applicant relied on Westpac Banking Corporation v Lenthall [2018] FCA 1422 and described it as a case restraining MinterEllison; court found the case exists but does not concern a restraint of solicitors and was misdescribed by the applicant.

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

Not specified in source record.

Additional detail

Applicant (unrepresented) provided a list of 24 authorities claimed to show instances where MinterEllison had been restrained. Court's associate and judge found the list contained fabricated or misdescribed citations; judge characterised the provision of those authorities as an egregious instance of misleading the court but did not impose professional sanctions. Restraint application dismissed on merits.

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/1050/Finch_v_The_Heat_Group_Pty_Ltd_Australia_27_February_2024.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).