What was hallucinated

Misrepresented: Legal Norm | Court flagged plaintiff's use of 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) to support the incorrect proposition that a magistrate 'may recommend but cannot strike pleadings absent district-judge adoption,' and corrected that §636(b)(1)(A) and Fed. R. Civ. P. 72 govern magistrate authority over non-dispositive matters. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Plaintiff asserted that the Magistrate Judge's R&R referenced Ankenbrandt v. Richards and Seminole Tribe v. Florida, but the Court noted neither case is cited in the R&Rs the plaintiff relied on. || Fabricated: Other | Court warned generative AI can create incorrect or made-up citations and noted plaintiff's filings contained inaccurate or fabricated citations.

Details

Warning

Sanction teardown · D. Massachusetts, USA · 2026-03-06

Gregory J. Van Etten v. Stephanie K. Fattman, et al.

What happened

In D. Massachusetts, 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 (Legal Norm)

Court flagged plaintiff's use of 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) to support the incorrect proposition that a magistrate 'may recommend but cannot strike pleadings absent district-judge adoption,' and corrected that §636(b)(1)(A) and Fed. R. Civ. P. 72 govern magistrate authority over non-dispositive matters.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Plaintiff asserted that the Magistrate Judge's R&R referenced Ankenbrandt v. Richards and Seminole Tribe v. Florida, but the Court noted neither case is cited in the R&Rs the plaintiff relied on.
Fabricated (Other)

Court warned generative AI can create incorrect or made-up citations and noted plaintiff's filings contained inaccurate or fabricated citations.

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

Additional detail

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/1659/Van_Etten_v._Fattman_USA_6_March_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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