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Powhatan County School Board v. Skinger et al

Court
E.D. Virginia
Jurisdiction
USA
Decided
2025-06-02
AI tool
ChatGPT
Outcome
Relevant motions stricken
Monetary penalty
None reported

What was hallucinated

Misrepresented: Case Law | Cited T.A. v. McKinney Independent School District, 861 F.2d 655 (5th Cir. 1988), but that reporter cite corresponds to Jones v. Otis Elevator Co., 861 F.2d 655 (11th Cir. 1988), unrelated. || Fabricated: Case Law | Used an improbable case name with no citation; court found it entirely fabricated and nonexistent. || Fabricated: Case Law | Provided only a name and year; targeted search found no such case; court deemed it nonexistent. || Fabricated: Case Law | Provided only a name and year without citation; court could not identify any such decision and treated it as nonexistent. || Fabricated: Case Law | Asserted a case tied to opposing counsel with no citation; targeted search found none; court found it nonexistent. || Fabricated: Case Law | Referenced a non-case caption without a proper case name or citation; court treated it as fabricated. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Cited a Fourth Circuit decision that does not exist; closest match is a Sixth Circuit criminal case and a much later district court case with no relevance. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited an unfindable Second Circuit case; closest match is Lin Zhong v. DOJ, 489 F.3d 126 (2d Cir. 2007); court found the cited case nonexistent. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Misstated circuit and case; the provided cite corresponds to a First Circuit civil case, not a Third Circuit decision as cited. || Fabricated: Case Law | Provided a Second Circuit citation that does not exist; closest is an unrelated Fifth Circuit case; court deemed it nonexistent. || Fabricated: Case Law | Provided a Second Circuit citation that does not exist; closest match is a criminal case; court deemed it nonexistent and irrelevant. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Ninth Circuit decision at a page number that does not exist; closest is a Tenth Circuit environmental case; court deemed it nonexistent for the proposition cited. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited an unfindable Seventh Circuit decision; closest is a Sixth Circuit immigration case; court found no apparent relevance and treated it as nonexistent. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Ninth Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is an Eleventh Circuit criminal case; court deemed the citation nonexistent and irrelevant. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Third Circuit case that does not exist; closest is a Fifth Circuit commercial case; court deemed it nonexistent and irrelevant to the issues. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Second Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Second Circuit criminal case; court treated the cited case as nonexistent. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Ninth Circuit criminal case with a non-existent page; closest case is a civil FDIC case; court treated the cited authority as nonexistent for the proposition. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Fourth Circuit case that does not exist; closest match is a Sixth Circuit case later withdrawn, with no relation; court treated it as nonexistent for the cited purpose. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Fifth Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Seventh Circuit case; court deemed the citation nonexistent. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a First Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Federal Circuit case; court treated it as nonexistent and irrelevant to the matter. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Ninth Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Seventh Circuit case; court deemed it nonexistent and irrelevant to IDEA issues. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Seventh Circuit decision at a non-existent page; closest is a Federal Circuit case; court found it nonexistent and irrelevant. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited an Eighth Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Second Circuit case; court found the citation nonexistent and unrelated. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Second Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Fourth Circuit case on a different topic; court treated it as nonexistent for the issue presented. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Southern District of New York case at a non-existent page; closest is a District of Massachusetts ERISA case; court deemed it nonexistent and irrelevant. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Second Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is an unrelated Second Circuit broadcasting case; court found it nonexistent for the proposition. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited an Eastern District of Virginia decision that does not exist; closest match is a D.D.C. case; court found no EDVA case by that name and deemed it fabricated. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Attributed a Ninth Circuit decision to the Fourth Circuit; citation actually matches Ninth Circuit; no Fourth Circuit case by that name exists. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited an E.D. Va. decision that does not exist; closest is an E.D.N.Y. employment case; targeted search found no such E.D. Va. case. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Maryland A.2d case that does not exist; closest is a Maine Supreme Judicial Court case; court found it fabricated. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Fourth Circuit decision that does not exist; closest is a First Circuit case; only similarly named case is an Indiana state case with no relevance. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Cited a Fourth Circuit decision that does not exist; the provided reporter corresponds to a Second Circuit case; only similar Fourth Circuit case is an unpublished 2000 decision. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a D. Ariz. decision that does not exist; closest is a D.N.M. case; court found the cited case fabricated. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Third Circuit decision at a non-existent page; closest is a Third Circuit criminal case; court deemed it fabricated and irrelevant. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Second Circuit decision at a non-existent page; closest is a Fifth Circuit criminal case; court treated it as fabricated. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Cited a Fourth Circuit case at a reporter page that corresponds to a Ninth Circuit criminal case; no similar Fourth Circuit case found. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Seventh Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is another Seventh Circuit education case with different page; court treated it as fabricated. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Southern District of New York decision with a Westlaw citation that does not exist; court found no similar citation. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited an E.D.N.Y. decision with a Westlaw citation that actually corresponds to an Advisory Council meeting report, not a case. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited an M.D. Tenn. decision at a non-existent page; closest is an unrelated E.D. Wis. case; court treated it as fabricated. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited an S.D.N.Y. decision with a non-existent Westlaw citation; court could find no similar Westlaw cite. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited an E.D. Ky. decision at a non-existent page; closest is an N.D. Ill. case; court treated it as fabricated and irrelevant. || Fabricated: Case Law | Cited a Fourth Circuit case at a reporter page that does not exist; closest match is Young v. New Haven Advocate, 315 F.3d 256 (4th Cir. 2002), on unrelated issues; court found no Beeman case in the Fourth Circuit.

Details

"The pervasive misrepresentations of the law in Lucas' filings cannot be tolerated. It serves to make a mockery of the judicial process. It causes an enormous waste of judicial resources to try to find cited cases that do not exist and to determine whether a cited authority is relevant or binding, only to determine that most are neither.In like fashion, Lucas' adversaries also must run to ground the nonexistent cases or address patently irrelevant ones. The adversaries must thus incur needless legal fees and expenses caused by Lucas' pervasive citations to nonexistent or irrelevant cases.[...]However, as previously noted Lucas appears to be judgment proof so monetary sanctions likely will not deter her from the abusive practices reflected in her filings and in her previously announced, consistently followed, abuse of the litigation proceedings created by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400, et seq. (“IDEA”). So, the Court must find some other way to protect the interests of justice and to deter Lucas from the abuses which have come to mark her approach to participation as a defendant in the judicial process.In this case, the most appropriate remedy is to strike Lucas' filings where they are burdensome by virtue of volume and exceed permitted page limits, where they are not cogent or understandable (when given the generous latitude afforded pro se litigants), and where they misrepresent the law by citing nonexistent or utterly irrelevant cases."In a subsequent Opinion, the court declined to reconsider or review its findings, pointing out that:"To begin, it is unclear what Lucas means by "contested" citations. The citations that the Court found to not exist are not "contested." They simply do not exist. There is no contesting that fact because the Court checked each citation that was referenced in its MEMORANDUM OPINION, exactly as Lucas cited them (and through other research means), and could not find any citation that matched what Lucas cited. That research demonstrates that the Court'sfindings are, in fact, supported rather than "[u]nsupported." Id.Then, in no way did the Court "wrongly assume[]" that these citations to nonexistent legal authority were "'fabricated' due to the use of generative AI." Id. The Court meticulously checked every citation that it held did not exist in those decisions. Those decisions were not based on "assumptions" but, instead, on the fact that either (1) no case existed under the reporter citation, case name, or quotation that Lucas used, or (2) a case with the reporter citation did exist but was to an entirely different case than the one cited by Lucas and had no relevancy to the issues of this case. ECF No. 170, at 520. And, there was no incorrect assumption that those nonexistent legal authorities were generated, hallucinated, or fabricated by AI because Lucas admitted, on the record, to using AI when writing her filings with the Court. The fact that her citations to nonexistent legal authority are so pervasive, in volume and in location throughout her filings, can lead to only one plausible conclusion: that an AI program hallucinated them in an effort to meet whatever Lucas' desired outcome was based on the prompt that she put into the AI program. As the Court described in its MEMORANDUM OPINION, this is becoming an alarmingly prevalent occurrence commonto AI programs. Id. at 23-26. It is exceedingly clear that it occurred here.[...]The MOTION also complains that the Court did not give Lucas an "opportunity to verify or correct citations." Id.Wholly apart from the fact that it is the litigant's (pro se or represented) burden to verify citations, there is no reason to have accorded Lucas the opportunity to verify because the problem was extensive and pervasive across at least six filings. Moreover, the Court actually did what should have been done before the MOTION was filed by determining that those citations do not exist. No further verification is necessary. And, after a diligent search, if the Court could not find the legal authorities that Lucas purported to rely upon and present as real and binding, it is a folly to believe that Lucas' efforts at "correction" would have returned anything different. Further, she could have taken the opportunity in this MOTION to go through—citation by citation—and "verify" or "correct" them to demonstrate to the Court that its findings were, in fact, incorrect, rather than just baldly and without evidence claiming them to be so. She did not do that."

Sanction teardown · E.D. Virginia, USA · 2025-06-02

Powhatan County School Board v. Skinger et al

What happened

In E.D. Virginia, USA, a filing relied on ChatGPT to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:

  • Misrepresented (Case Law)
    Cited T.A. v. McKinney Independent School District, 861 F.2d 655 (5th Cir. 1988), but that reporter cite corresponds to Jones v. Otis Elevator Co., 861 F.2d 655 (11th Cir. 1988), unrelated.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Used an improbable case name with no citation; court found it entirely fabricated and nonexistent.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Provided only a name and year; targeted search found no such case; court deemed it nonexistent.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Provided only a name and year without citation; court could not identify any such decision and treated it as nonexistent.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Asserted a case tied to opposing counsel with no citation; targeted search found none; court found it nonexistent.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Referenced a non-case caption without a proper case name or citation; court treated it as fabricated.
  • Misrepresented (Case Law)
    Cited a Fourth Circuit decision that does not exist; closest match is a Sixth Circuit criminal case and a much later district court case with no relevance.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited an unfindable Second Circuit case; closest match is Lin Zhong v. DOJ, 489 F.3d 126 (2d Cir. 2007); court found the cited case nonexistent.
  • Misrepresented (Case Law)
    Misstated circuit and case; the provided cite corresponds to a First Circuit civil case, not a Third Circuit decision as cited.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Provided a Second Circuit citation that does not exist; closest is an unrelated Fifth Circuit case; court deemed it nonexistent.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Provided a Second Circuit citation that does not exist; closest match is a criminal case; court deemed it nonexistent and irrelevant.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Ninth Circuit decision at a page number that does not exist; closest is a Tenth Circuit environmental case; court deemed it nonexistent for the proposition cited.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited an unfindable Seventh Circuit decision; closest is a Sixth Circuit immigration case; court found no apparent relevance and treated it as nonexistent.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Ninth Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is an Eleventh Circuit criminal case; court deemed the citation nonexistent and irrelevant.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Third Circuit case that does not exist; closest is a Fifth Circuit commercial case; court deemed it nonexistent and irrelevant to the issues.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Second Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Second Circuit criminal case; court treated the cited case as nonexistent.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Ninth Circuit criminal case with a non-existent page; closest case is a civil FDIC case; court treated the cited authority as nonexistent for the proposition.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Fourth Circuit case that does not exist; closest match is a Sixth Circuit case later withdrawn, with no relation; court treated it as nonexistent for the cited purpose.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Fifth Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Seventh Circuit case; court deemed the citation nonexistent.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a First Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Federal Circuit case; court treated it as nonexistent and irrelevant to the matter.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Ninth Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Seventh Circuit case; court deemed it nonexistent and irrelevant to IDEA issues.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Seventh Circuit decision at a non-existent page; closest is a Federal Circuit case; court found it nonexistent and irrelevant.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited an Eighth Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Second Circuit case; court found the citation nonexistent and unrelated.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Second Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is a Fourth Circuit case on a different topic; court treated it as nonexistent for the issue presented.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Southern District of New York case at a non-existent page; closest is a District of Massachusetts ERISA case; court deemed it nonexistent and irrelevant.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Second Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is an unrelated Second Circuit broadcasting case; court found it nonexistent for the proposition.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited an Eastern District of Virginia decision that does not exist; closest match is a D.D.C. case; court found no EDVA case by that name and deemed it fabricated.
  • Misrepresented (Case Law)
    Attributed a Ninth Circuit decision to the Fourth Circuit; citation actually matches Ninth Circuit; no Fourth Circuit case by that name exists.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited an E.D. Va. decision that does not exist; closest is an E.D.N.Y. employment case; targeted search found no such E.D. Va. case.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Maryland A.2d case that does not exist; closest is a Maine Supreme Judicial Court case; court found it fabricated.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Fourth Circuit decision that does not exist; closest is a First Circuit case; only similarly named case is an Indiana state case with no relevance.
  • Misrepresented (Case Law)
    Cited a Fourth Circuit decision that does not exist; the provided reporter corresponds to a Second Circuit case; only similar Fourth Circuit case is an unpublished 2000 decision.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a D. Ariz. decision that does not exist; closest is a D.N.M. case; court found the cited case fabricated.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Third Circuit decision at a non-existent page; closest is a Third Circuit criminal case; court deemed it fabricated and irrelevant.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Second Circuit decision at a non-existent page; closest is a Fifth Circuit criminal case; court treated it as fabricated.
  • Misrepresented (Case Law)
    Cited a Fourth Circuit case at a reporter page that corresponds to a Ninth Circuit criminal case; no similar Fourth Circuit case found.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Seventh Circuit case at a non-existent page; closest is another Seventh Circuit education case with different page; court treated it as fabricated.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Southern District of New York decision with a Westlaw citation that does not exist; court found no similar citation.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited an E.D.N.Y. decision with a Westlaw citation that actually corresponds to an Advisory Council meeting report, not a case.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited an M.D. Tenn. decision at a non-existent page; closest is an unrelated E.D. Wis. case; court treated it as fabricated.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited an S.D.N.Y. decision with a non-existent Westlaw citation; court could find no similar Westlaw cite.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited an E.D. Ky. decision at a non-existent page; closest is an N.D. Ill. case; court treated it as fabricated and irrelevant.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Cited a Fourth Circuit case at a reporter page that does not exist; closest match is Young v. New Haven Advocate, 315 F.3d 256 (4th Cir. 2002), on unrelated issues; court found no Beeman case in the Fourth Circuit.

Which AI tool

ChatGPT. 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

Relevant motions stricken

Additional detail

"The pervasive misrepresentations of the law in Lucas' filings cannot be tolerated. It serves to make a mockery of the judicial process. It causes an enormous waste of judicial resources to try to find cited cases that do not exist and to determine whether a cited authority is relevant or binding, only to determine that most are neither.In like fashion, Lucas' adversaries also must run to ground the nonexistent cases or address patently irrelevant ones. The adversaries must thus incur needless legal fees and expenses caused by Lucas' pervasive citations to nonexistent or irrelevant cases.[...]However, as previously noted Lucas appears to be judgment proof so monetary sanctions likely will not deter her from the abusive practices reflected in her filings and in her previously announced, consistently followed, abuse of the litigation proceedings created by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400, et seq. (“IDEA”). So, the Court must find some other way to protect the interests of justice and to deter Lucas from the abuses which have come to mark her approach to participation as a defendant in the judicial process.In this case, the most appropriate remedy is to strike Lucas' filings where they are burdensome by virtue of volume and exceed permitted page limits, where they are not cogent or understandable (when given the generous latitude afforded pro se litigants), and where they misrepresent the law by citing nonexistent or utterly irrelevant cases."In a subsequent Opinion, the court declined to reconsider or review its findings, pointing out that:"To begin, it is unclear what Lucas means by "contested" citations. The citations that the Court found to not exist are not "contested." They simply do not exist. There is no contesting that fact because the Court checked each citation that was referenced in its MEMORANDUM OPINION, exactly as Lucas cited them (and through other research means), and could not find any citation that matched what Lucas cited. That research demonstrates that the Court'sfindings are, in fact, supported rather than "[u]nsupported." Id.Then, in no way did the Court "wrongly assume[]" that these citations to nonexistent legal authority were "'fabricated' due to the use of generative AI." Id. The Court meticulously checked every citation that it held did not exist in those decisions. Those decisions were not based on "assumptions" but, instead, on the fact that either (1) no case existed under the reporter citation, case name, or quotation that Lucas used, or (2) a case with the reporter citation did exist but was to an entirely different case than the one cited by Lucas and had no relevancy to the issues of this case. ECF No. 170, at 520. And, there was no incorrect assumption that those nonexistent legal authorities were generated, hallucinated, or fabricated by AI because Lucas admitted, on the record, to using AI when writing her filings with the Court. The fact that her citations to nonexistent legal authority are so pervasive, in volume and in location throughout her filings, can lead to only one plausible conclusion: that an AI program hallucinated them in an effort to meet whatever Lucas' desired outcome was based on the prompt that she put into the AI program. As the Court described in its MEMORANDUM OPINION, this is becoming an alarmingly prevalent occurrence commonto AI programs. Id. at 23-26. It is exceedingly clear that it occurred here.[...]The MOTION also complains that the Court did not give Lucas an "opportunity to verify or correct citations." Id.Wholly apart from the fact that it is the litigant's (pro se or represented) burden to verify citations, there is no reason to have accorded Lucas the opportunity to verify because the problem was extensive and pervasive across at least six filings. Moreover, the Court actually did what should have been done before the MOTION was filed by determining that those citations do not exist. No further verification is necessary. And, after a diligent search, if the Court could not find the legal authorities that Lucas purported to rely upon and present as real and binding, it is a folly to believe that Lucas' efforts at "correction" would have returned anything different. Further, she could have taken the opportunity in this MOTION to go through—citation by citation—and "verify" or "correct" them to demonstrate to the Court that its findings were, in fact, incorrect, rather than just baldly and without evidence claiming them to be so. She did not do that."

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/473/Powhatan_County_School_Board_v._Skinger_et_al_E.D._Virginia_USA_2_June_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/473/Powhatan_County_School_Board_v._Skinger_et_al_E.D._Virginia_USA_2_June_2025.pdf

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