Sanction teardown · CA Arizona (1d), USA · 2026-03-31
Hampton v. Lofton
What happened
In CA Arizona (1d), 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 (Exhibits & Submissions)Father's opening brief asserted trial-court findings (e.g., Child showed 'persistent hostility toward Father', 'difficulty adjusting to custodial transitions', Father's evidence was 'self-serving', Mother was 'evasive and inconsistent') that do not appear in the superior court's order; the appellate court described these as hallucinated.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Both Father's opening and reply briefs contained legal citations that the appellate court found either did not support his positions or 'appear to be fictitious', contrary to ARCAP 13 requirements.
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.
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/1912/Hampton_v._Lofton_USA_31_March_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).