What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Skeleton argument contained citations that did not relate to the cases named; advocates agreed several citations/propositions were erroneous and the court identified these as AI-generated fabricated case law. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Some cited authorities were existing cases or statutes that did not support the propositions advanced—misattribution of precedent and statutory provisions traced to AI output. || Misrepresented: Legal Norm | Statutory provisions were cited in support of propositions they did not establish, attributed to AI assistance without verification.

Sanction teardown · Family Court Bournemouth, UK · 2026-03-05

Re A, B, C, D (Extension of assessment; Use of AI: hallucinations)

What happened

In Family Court Bournemouth, UK, 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)

Skeleton argument contained citations that did not relate to the cases named; advocates agreed several citations/propositions were erroneous and the court identified these as AI-generated fabricated case law.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Some cited authorities were existing cases or statutes that did not support the propositions advanced—misattribution of precedent and statutory provisions traced to AI output.
Misrepresented (Legal Norm)

Statutory provisions were cited in support of propositions they did not establish, attributed to AI assistance without verification.

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.

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/1857/Re_A_B_C_D_UK_5_March_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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