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John Coulsto et al. v Elliott

Court
The High Court
Jurisdiction
Ireland
Decided
2024-12-10
AI tool
implied
Outcome
Court rejected the submission as fallacious
Monetary penalty
None reported

What was hallucinated

Outdated Advice: Repealed Law | Defendants' written submissions asserted Section 19 of the Conveyancing Act 1881 had been repealed by the 2009 Act, eliminating statutory power to appoint a receiver; court found this claim false and noted s.19 was reinstated by the 2013 Act.

Details

Defendants' written submissions (not argued at trial) advanced that s.19 of the Conveyancing Act 1881 had been repealed by the 2009 Act, undermining the power to appoint a receiver. The court found the argument fallacious, noted s.19 was reinstated by the 2013 Act, and observed the submissions were likely produced by a generative AI or an unqualified adviser.

Sanction teardown · The High Court, Ireland · 2024-12-10

John Coulsto et al. v Elliott

What happened

In The High Court, Ireland, 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:

  • Outdated Advice (Repealed Law)
    Defendants' written submissions asserted Section 19 of the Conveyancing Act 1881 had been repealed by the 2009 Act, eliminating statutory power to appoint a receiver; court found this claim false and noted s.19 was reinstated by the 2013 Act.

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

Court rejected the submission as fallacious

Additional detail

Defendants' written submissions (not argued at trial) advanced that s.19 of the Conveyancing Act 1881 had been repealed by the 2009 Act, undermining the power to appoint a receiver. The court found the argument fallacious, noted s.19 was reinstated by the 2013 Act, and observed the submissions were likely produced by a generative AI or an unqualified adviser.

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/726/2024IEHC697.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/726/2024IEHC697.pdf

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