Sanction teardown · 8th Cir. CA (Bankruptcy), USA · 2026-04-08

James C. Young; Tahnee R. Young v. Happy Money

What happened

In 8th Cir. CA (Bankruptcy), 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 (Case Law)
  Debtors cited "In re Cherrett, 873 F.3d 1060 (9th Cir. 2017)" and relied on it for a sanctions-related proposition; court found the retrieved Cherrett case exists but concerns a different issue (consumer/business debt), so Debtors mischaracterized the case's holding.
• Fabricated (Case Law)
  Debtors cited "In re Pringle, 377 B.R. 308 (Bankr. D. Colo. 2007)"; court found the citation does not exist as cited and a search returns an unrelated New Mexico case.
• Fabricated (Case Law)
  Debtors cited "In re Johnson, 276 B.R. 367 (Bankr. E.D. Va. 2002)"; court found the citation as cited does not exist and the case retrieved from database was a Delaware opinion unrelated to the issues.
• Fabricated (Case Law)
  Debtors cited "In re Steward, 475 B.R. 518 (Bankr. E.D. Mo. 2012)"; court's search retrieved Swanson v. Applied Process Technology Int'l, LLC (In re Delta-T Corp.), 475 B.R. 495 (Bankr. E.D. Va. 2012), showing the cited page and case do not match Debtors' description.

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.

Check a brief before you file it → · See our live false-verify rate

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/1945/Young_v._Happy_Money_USA_8_April_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).