What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Motion contained a citation to a case that does not appear to exist (identified in the motion at ROA 100, p.6:15-18); court found the citation non-existent. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Motion cited authority that did not support the proposition asserted (mis-citation) (ROA 100, p.6:1-3); court found the citation did not stand for the premise. || Outdated Advice: Repealed Law | Notice of Errata removed two cited cases and 'corrected' other citations to repealed statutes, indicating use of outdated/repealed legal authority.

Details

Court denied OSC/motion on procedural safe-harbor grounds but found defendants submitted miscited, non-existent, and inapposite authorities (and noted risk of AI-generated fake citations). Defendants accepted responsibility but no sanctions imposed.

Sanction teardown · SC California, USA · 2025-10-03

Tovar v. American Automatic Fire Suppression Inc.

What happened

In SC 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:

Fabricated (Case Law)

Motion contained a citation to a case that does not appear to exist (identified in the motion at ROA 100, p.6:15-18); court found the citation non-existent.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Motion cited authority that did not support the proposition asserted (mis-citation) (ROA 100, p.6:1-3); court found the citation did not stand for the premise.
Outdated Advice (Repealed Law)

Notice of Errata removed two cited cases and 'corrected' other citations to repealed statutes, indicating use of outdated/repealed legal authority.

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

OSC/motion denied; no sanctions imposed.

Additional detail

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://reason.com/volokh/2025/10/17/court-concludes-filings-from-250-lawyer-firm-contained-ai-hallucinations/?nab=0, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Don’t be the next case in this database.

Citation Safe checks every citation against primary sources before it reaches a filing.

Try the free checker Back to database

On the opposing side of their next motion?

Check their next brief through the same engine that would have caught this filing — $49, no signup, full annotated report you can attach to your Rule 11 or sanctions motion.

Open Opposition Check — $49 Sanctions-motion template