Sanction teardown · S.D. Alabama, USA · 2026-03-31
Heimkes v. Fairhope Motorcoach Resort Condominium Owners Association, Inc.
What happened
In S.D. Alabama, USA, a filing relied on Cocounsel (Westlaw) to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:
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Outdated Advice (Overturned Case Law)Relied on Chevron deference as authoritative despite Loper Bright having overruled its application; Court found Eaton misrepresented the status of the law.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Multiple citations in Eaton's filings were fabricated or did not exist; Court and Defendant found citations that either do not exist or do not match the referenced names.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Cited existing cases but attributed propositions or quotes those cases did not contain; Court's independent review found misrepresentations/false quotations of authorities.
Which AI tool
Cocounsel (Westlaw). 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
Reprimand; Order to file order in subsequent cases; Bar Referral; Adverse Costs Order (monetary penalty: 55597 .)
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/1890/Heimkes_v._Fairhope_USA_31_March_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).