What was hallucinated

Misrepresented: Doctrinal Work | Applicants relied on a purported statement of BAB Practice Note 9A that in fact the practice note does not contain; the Board found the practice note was misrepresented. || Fabricated: Case Law | Applicants cited a non-existent 'Senior Member Houghton' as having decided Davison v Molinaro (No 4); the Board found there is no BAB member named Houghton and the attribution was incorrect. || False Quotes: Case Law | Applicants quoted paragraph 33 (and paragraph 31) of Davison v Molinaro (No 4) in support of a costs principle; the Board found those paragraphs do not contain the claimed statements (a false quote/mischaracterisation of that decision). || Misrepresented: Case Law | Applicants asserted Kuek v Devflan established a rule about assessing party-party recoveries at roughly two-thirds of solicitor-client costs; the Board found Kuek does not establish that principle.

Sanction teardown · Victoria BAB, Australia · 2026-05-07

O'Bryan & Anor v Strod60 Pty Ltd (No 2) [2026] VBAB 33

What happened

In Victoria BAB, Australia, 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 (Doctrinal Work)

Applicants relied on a purported statement of BAB Practice Note 9A that in fact the practice note does not contain; the Board found the practice note was misrepresented.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Applicants cited a non-existent 'Senior Member Houghton' as having decided Davison v Molinaro (No 4); the Board found there is no BAB member named Houghton and the attribution was incorrect.
False Quotes (Case Law)

Applicants quoted paragraph 33 (and paragraph 31) of Davison v Molinaro (No 4) in support of a costs principle; the Board found those paragraphs do not contain the claimed statements (a false quote/mischaracterisation of that decision).
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Applicants asserted Kuek v Devflan established a rule about assessing party-party recoveries at roughly two-thirds of solicitor-client costs; the Board found Kuek does not establish that principle.

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

Admonishment; Taken into account for adverse Cost Order (monetary penalty: 1 AUD.)

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/2553/OBryan__Anor_v_Strod60_Pty_Ltd_No_2_2026_VBAB_33_7_May_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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