Skip to main content
Citation Safe

Was In the Interest of R.A. on the other side of your case?

Check their next brief before they file — Opposition Check verifies every citation in a filed brief for $49, no signup. Get Opposition Check →

In the Interest of R.A.

Court
CA Iowa
Jurisdiction
USA
Decided
2025-10-01
AI tool
Unidentified
Outcome
Brief struck; Monetary penalty OR two hours of AI-specific CLE; referral to Bar
Monetary penalty
150 USD

What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Reply brief included citations to cases and statutory text that the court could not locate; court concluded they were likely fabricated by AI and ordered counsel to explain. || False Quotes: Case Law | Reply brief contained inaccurate quotations from purported authorities such that the court determined the quotations were not accurately derived from real sources.

Sanction teardown · CA Iowa, USA · 2025-10-01

In the Interest of R.A.

What happened

In CA Iowa, 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:

  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Reply brief included citations to cases and statutory text that the court could not locate; court concluded they were likely fabricated by AI and ordered counsel to explain.
  • False Quotes (Case Law)
    Reply brief contained inaccurate quotations from purported authorities such that the court determined the quotations were not accurately derived from real sources.

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

Brief struck; Monetary penalty OR two hours of AI-specific CLE; referral to Bar (monetary penalty: 150 USD.)

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/834/In_the_Int._of_R.A.__2025_Iowa_App._LEXIS_860.PDF, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/834/In_the_Int._of_R.A.__2025_Iowa_App._LEXIS_860.PDF

Don’t be the next case in this database.

Citation Safe checks every citation against primary sources before it reaches a filing.

Try the free checkerBack to database

On the opposing side of their next motion?

Check their next brief through the same engine that would have caught this filing — $49, no signup, full annotated report you can attach to your Rule 11 or sanctions motion.

Open Opposition Check — $49Sanctions-motion template