Sanction teardown · California, USA · 2024-08-23
Rasmussen v. Rasmussen
What happened
In California, 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:
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Defendant cited Ferreira v. Ferreira for joinder/equitable distribution; court found it is a child custody/forum non conveniens case and does not support the proposition.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Defendant cited Erlich v. Superior Court as requiring good-faith negotiation before suit; court held Erlich concerns injunctions of collection actions and says nothing about such a requirement.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Defendant cited Albertson v. Raboff for the proposition that abuse of legal process indicates bad faith; court stated Albertson addresses lis pendens privilege and does not mention 'abuse' or 'bad faith.'
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Fabricated (Case Law)Defendant cited Dino v. Pelliccioni (1962) 200 Cal.App.2d 163 to oppose partition by sale; court found no such case exists and the citation corresponds to Kramer v. State Board of Accountancy, unrelated to partition.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Defendant cited Harmon v. Harmon (2001) 24 Cal.4th 259 regarding trustee duties; court found no such case exists and the page falls within People v. Ayala (2000) 24 Cal.4th 243.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Defendant cited Estate of Green (1955) 135 Cal.App.2d 495 regarding trustee duties; court found no such case exists and the citation maps to Staggs v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (1955) 135 Cal.App.2d 492.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Defendant cited Kerrigan v. O’Meara (1926) 71 Cal.App. 346 to attack pleading sufficiency; court found no such California case exists and the pinpoint corresponds to People v. Albrexstondare (1925) 71 Cal.App. 339; a Montana case with that caption is irrelevant.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Defendant cited Dieden v. Schmidt (2002) 104 Cal.App.4th 645 to argue against partition by sale; court noted the case concerns judgment creditor rights and does not mention partition.
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
Lawyer ordered to show cause why she should not be referred to the bar
Additional detail
While the Court initially organised show cause proceedings leading to potential sanctions, the case was eventually settled. Nevertheless, the Court stated that it "intends to report Ms. Rasmussen’s use of mis-cited and nonexistent cases in the demurrer to the State Bar", unless she objected to "this tentative ruling".
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.
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Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/439/Rasmussen_v._Rasmussen_CA_USA_August_23_2024.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).