What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Applicant's submissions referred to cases that do not exist; tribunal concluded they were likely AI-generated hallucinations and declined to address those citations.

Details

"Mr. Obermann’s submissions refer to cases that do not exist or do not apply. I find the most likely explanation is that they are “hallucinations” generated by artificial intelligence. In AQ v. BW, 2025 BCCRT 907 at paragraph 16, a CRT vice chair found that CRT’s obligation to provide sufficient reasons did not require it to address arguments with no basis in law. I agree with this reasoning and do not address those cases. "

Sanction teardown · BC CRT, Canada · 2025-12-19

Obermann v. ICBC

What happened

In BC CRT, Canada, 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)

Applicant's submissions referred to cases that do not exist; tribunal concluded they were likely AI-generated hallucinations and declined to address those citations.

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.

Additional detail

"Mr. Obermann’s submissions refer to cases that do not exist or do not apply. I find the most likely explanation is that they are “hallucinations” generated by artificial intelligence. In AQ v. BW, 2025 BCCRT 907 at paragraph 16, a CRT vice chair found that CRT’s obligation to provide sufficient reasons did not require it to address arguments with no basis in law. I agree with this reasoning and do not address those cases. "

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/1202/Obermann_v._ICBC_Canada.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).