AI Hallucination Cases

The Court noted prior use of hallucinated cases attributed to purported AI use and denied Plaintiff's motion for leave to amend as futile. The Court previously denied an earlier motion for failing to comply and because of hallucinated cases; here futility and procedural deficiencies warranted denial.

While the R&R recommended a monetary sanction, in the eventual order (available here), the court opted only for six hours of CLE, and the requirement of a "sworn statement with every document [Counsel] files in this Court verifying that [Counsel] has personally checked all citations and quotations in the filing to ensure accuracy."

The Court refused to consider a pro se plaintiff's AI-generated "Legal Analysis Report" produced with ChatGPT-4o because it contained incorrect and factitious citations and misstatements of law; the Rule 60(b) motion was denied.

While the court did not ascertained whether the plaintiff's brief contained any hallucination, Pelaikan identified at least two, as well as several misrepresentations: see the report here.

Order to Show Cause is here.

The court found that nearly all caselaw cited in the appellant's supplemental brief could not be located and appears fictitious; the court suggested the use of an AI tool but chose to address the merits and issued a caution about reliance on such tools.

See the story as recounted, e.g., here.

In an earlier order, following Show Cause proceedings, a magistrate determined that the counsel violated Rule 11(b)(2) by failing to verify the accuracy of the citations and imposed several sanctions:

1. "The pro hac vice status of Counsel shall be revoked and Counsel will be removed from this case;
2. Plaintiff’s Opening Brief shall be stricken;
3. Counsel will be ordered to promptly serve a copy of this Order on Plaintiff, who will in turn be afforded time to engage new counsel or proceed as a self-represented litigant;
4. Counsel will be ordered to write a letter to the three Judges to whom she attributed fictitious cases, [...], notifying them of her use of fake cases with their respective names attached;
5. Counsel will be ordered to transmit a copy of this Order to every Judge who presides over any case in which Counsel is attorney of record; and
6. The Clerk of Court’s Office will be directed to serve a copy of this Order on the Washington State Bar Association, of which Counsel is a member. If Counsel is a member of any other state’s bar, she shall serve a copy of this Order on that state’s bar office."

The court later reversed all sanctions, but reinstated the first and second on other grounds.