Skip to main content
Citation Safe

Was Zhang on the other side of your case?

Check their next brief before they file — Opposition Check verifies every citation in a filed brief for $49, no signup. Get Opposition Check →

Zhang v. Chen

Court
BC Supreme Court
Jurisdiction
Canada
Decided
2024-02-20
AI tool
ChatGPT
Outcome
Claimant awarded costs
Monetary penalty
None reported

What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Two case citations in the notice of application were invented by ChatGPT and could not be located; court accepted they were fabricated and Counsel admitted using ChatGPT. || Fabricated: Case Law | Second invented citation in the notice of application was generated by ChatGPT and non-existent; disclosed by opposing counsel's research and admitted by Counsel

Details

"[29] Citing fake cases in court filings and other materials handed up to the court isan abuse of process and is tantamount to making a false statement to the court.Unchecked, it can lead to a miscarriage of justice."

Sanction teardown · BC Supreme Court, Canada · 2024-02-20

Zhang v. Chen

What happened

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

  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Two case citations in the notice of application were invented by ChatGPT and could not be located; court accepted they were fabricated and Counsel admitted using ChatGPT.
  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Second invented citation in the notice of application was generated by ChatGPT and non-existent; disclosed by opposing counsel's research and admitted by Counsel

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

Claimant awarded costs

Additional detail

"[29] Citing fake cases in court filings and other materials handed up to the court isan abuse of process and is tantamount to making a false statement to the court.Unchecked, it can lead to a miscarriage of justice."

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/772/Zhang_v._Chen.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/772/Zhang_v._Chen.pdf

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 checkerBack 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 — $49Sanctions-motion template