What was hallucinated

Misrepresented: Case Law | Plaintiff represented that Hakeem held pretrial detention over one year is presumptively prejudicial; court noted Hakeem held the opposite. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Plaintiff cited Reitz as supporting that district attorney's offices can be sued under § 1983; court noted Reitz held the Bucks County DA's Office is not an entity for § 1983 purposes. || Fabricated: Case Law | Plaintiff asserted the Police Department cited Will v. Michigan Dep’t of State Police though the Police Department's brief did not cite Will. || Fabricated: Case Law | Plaintiff claimed the Police Department relied on Estate of Lagano, but the Police Department's filings contained no such citation. || Fabricated: Case Law | Plaintiff alleged the Police Department cited Albright v. Oliver though the court found no such citation in the department's brief.

Sanction teardown · M.D. Pennsylvania, USA · 2026-05-29

Trauger v. Columbia County District Attorney's Office et al.

What happened

In M.D. Pennsylvania, 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:

Misrepresented (Case Law)

Plaintiff represented that Hakeem held pretrial detention over one year is presumptively prejudicial; court noted Hakeem held the opposite.
Misrepresented (Case Law)

Plaintiff cited Reitz as supporting that district attorney's offices can be sued under § 1983; court noted Reitz held the Bucks County DA's Office is not an entity for § 1983 purposes.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Plaintiff asserted the Police Department cited Will v. Michigan Dep’t of State Police though the Police Department's brief did not cite Will.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Plaintiff claimed the Police Department relied on Estate of Lagano, but the Police Department's filings contained no such citation.
Fabricated (Case Law)

Plaintiff alleged the Police Department cited Albright v. Oliver though the court found no such citation in the department's brief.

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

Warning

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/2278/Trauger_v._Columbia_County_District_Attorneys_Office_USA_29_May_2026.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

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