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United States v. Glennie Antonio McGee

Court
S.D. Alabama
Jurisdiction
USA
Decided
2025-10-10
AI tool
Ghostwriter Legal
Outcome
Public reprimand, referral and order to notify jurisdictions; monetary sanction
Monetary penalty
5000

What was hallucinated

False Quotes: Case Law | The filing attributed quotations to cases that, upon review, were false or misquoted from the cited authorities. || Outdated Advice: Overturned Case Law | The motion directed the Court to precedent that had been reversed by the Supreme Court more than 40 years earlier. || Misrepresented: Case Law | Several citations did not correspond to the referenced names or did not relate to the issues for which they were cited (misrepresented authorities). || Fabricated: Case Law | Motion contained multiple non-existent case citations generated by Ghostwriter Legal; the United States and the Court could not locate the cited opinions.

Details

Folllowing a show cause order, Counsel admitted to having used the tool together with Google Search, and explained that, although he was aware of the issues with AI models like ChatGPT, he said he did not expect this tool to fall into the same issues. The Court found Attorney James A. Johnson used Ghostwriter Legal to draft a motion that contained multiple fabricated case citations, misstated/false quotations attributed to authorities, and cited precedent that had been reversed by the Supreme Court. The Court found the conduct tantamount to bad faith and imposed sanctions under its inherent authority. Sanctions include an order to file, not under seal, this order "in any case in any court wherein he appears as counsel fortwelve (12) months after the date of this order."

Sanction teardown · S.D. Alabama, USA · 2025-10-10

United States v. Glennie Antonio McGee

What happened

In S.D. Alabama, USA, a filing relied on Ghostwriter Legal to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:

  • False Quotes (Case Law)
    The filing attributed quotations to cases that, upon review, were false or misquoted from the cited authorities.
  • Outdated Advice (Overturned Case Law)
    The motion directed the Court to precedent that had been reversed by the Supreme Court more than 40 years earlier.
  • Misrepresented (Case Law)
    Several citations did not correspond to the referenced names or did not relate to the issues for which they were cited (misrepresented authorities).
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Motion contained multiple non-existent case citations generated by Ghostwriter Legal; the United States and the Court could not locate the cited opinions.

Which AI tool

Ghostwriter Legal. 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

Public reprimand, referral and order to notify jurisdictions; monetary sanction (monetary penalty: 5000 .)

Additional detail

Folllowing a show cause order, Counsel admitted to having used the tool together with Google Search, and explained that, although he was aware of the issues with AI models like ChatGPT, he said he did not expect this tool to fall into the same issues. The Court found Attorney James A. Johnson used Ghostwriter Legal to draft a motion that contained multiple fabricated case citations, misstated/false quotations attributed to authorities, and cited precedent that had been reversed by the Supreme Court. The Court found the conduct tantamount to bad faith and imposed sanctions under its inherent authority. Sanctions include an order to file, not under seal, this order "in any case in any court wherein he appears as counsel fortwelve (12) months after the date of this order."

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/862/USA_v._McGee_10_OCtober_2025.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/862/USA_v._McGee_10_OCtober_2025.pdf

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