Hallucinations & Sanctions

Judge Otis Wright of the Central District of California sanctioned plaintiff’s counsel $2,500 for using AI-generated fictitious citations three times — including attempting to conceal the misconduct — and ordered the attorney to file a disclosure declaration in every case he actively handles.

An Assistant U.S. Attorney was ordered to appear before a federal court in North Carolina after fabricated quotations and misrepresented case holdings were found across five government filings — including fabricated regulatory text from the Code of Federal Regulations. Supervisors and the Civil Divi

In a child custody appeal, a pro se father cited four “findings” of the trial court that simply did not appear in the actual court order. The Arizona Court of Appeals called these “hallucinated findings” — the first time an appellate court applied the term “hallucinated” directly to a litigant’s mis

A US federal court struck Makel’s opposition brief after discovering it cited non-existent cases generated by AI, issuing an order to show cause on sanctions. The court held that Rule 11 certification applies with full force to AI-assisted filings, and ignorance of AI’s hallucination tendency is not

A C.D. California judge issued a show cause order threatening $2,500 in sanctions or dismissal after plaintiffs’ counsel misrepresented case holdings and included a non-existent quotation in a banking brief — and then failed to correct the errors even after defendants identified them in a reply.