Sanction teardown · US Tax Court, USA · 2024-10-23
Thomas v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
What happened
In US Tax Court, 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)Cited Schluter v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 1998-269, for deductibility of unreimbursed employee expenses; Court found Schluter is T.C. Memo 1970-67 (dependency exemption) and T.C. Memo 1998-269 is Schmitt v. Commissioner (method of accounting), neither supporting the proposition.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Cited Meneguzzo v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 1969-15, for unreimbursed expense deductions; Court found Meneguzzo is 43 T.C. 824 (1965) (tip reporting) and T.C. Memo 1969-15 is B-E-C-K McLaughlin & Assoc. v. Renegotiation Board (excess profits), not supporting the proposition.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Cited Gagliardi v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2011-194, for burden shifting on unreimbursed expenses; Court found Gagliardi is T.C. Memo 2008-10 (gambling losses) and T.C. Memo 2011-194 is Layton v. Commissioner (collection), not supporting the proposition.
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
Pretrial Memorandum stricken
Additional detail
The lawyer for the petitioner admitted to not reviewing the memorandum, which was prepared by a paralegal. The court deemed the Pretrial Memorandum stricken but did not impose a monetary penalty, considering the economic situation of the petitioner and the lawyer's service to a client who might otherwise be unrepresented. It was also pertinent that the law being stated was accurate (even if the citations were wrong).
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/648/Thomas_v._CIR_USA_23_October_2024.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).