What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Exhibits & Submissions | Hyperlink claimed to point to the Stad Brugge 'beheerplan kleine stadsbossen' but the URL was incorrect and not connected to the alleged source; link included referral parameter 'utm_source=chatgpt.com'. Court flagged this as evidence of AI-generated/unreliable sourcing. || Fabricated: Other | References to external web sources (Spotto, TomTom) in the reply included ChatGPT-linked URLs that returned errors or unrelated pages (404/'sold'), indicating unreliable or misrepresented sourcing. || Fabricated: Exhibits & Submissions | The rebuttal contained lengthy, generic theoretical overviews (e.g., PFAS, measurement uncertainty, 'bouwpraktijk') not concretely tied to the dossier, which the court attributed to AI generation and treated as unreliable or irrelevant. || Outdated Advice: Repealed Law | Wederantwoordnota relied on jurisprudence and wording tied to a former legal provision (art. 4.8.11 VCRO) that has been repealed for more than ten years; court treated this as outdated/misleading reliance.

Sanction teardown · RvVb, Belgium · 2026-03-19

RvVb-A-2526-0597

What happened

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

Fabricated (Exhibits & Submissions)

Hyperlink claimed to point to the Stad Brugge 'beheerplan kleine stadsbossen' but the URL was incorrect and not connected to the alleged source; link included referral parameter 'utm_source=chatgpt.com'. Court flagged this as evidence of AI-generated/unreliable sourcing.
Fabricated (Other)

References to external web sources (Spotto, TomTom) in the reply included ChatGPT-linked URLs that returned errors or unrelated pages (404/'sold'), indicating unreliable or misrepresented sourcing.
Fabricated (Exhibits & Submissions)

The rebuttal contained lengthy, generic theoretical overviews (e.g., PFAS, measurement uncertainty, 'bouwpraktijk') not concretely tied to the dossier, which the court attributed to AI generation and treated as unreliable or irrelevant.
Outdated Advice (Repealed Law)

Wederantwoordnota relied on jurisprudence and wording tied to a former legal provision (art. 4.8.11 VCRO) that has been repealed for more than ten years; court treated this as outdated/misleading reliance.

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

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/2491/RVVB.A.2526.0597.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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