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.

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.

Clearpoint, a non-party document preparer, used undisclosed AI to draft filings for the pro se plaintiff that contained numerous nonexistent cases, statutes, and misquoted/misconstrued authorities. Nationstar highlighted over sixty instances; the Court found hallmarks of AI-produced work and referred the matter to the Arizona State Bar and Attorney General for potential investigation.

Appellant Father's counsel submitted an opening brief containing misleading/inaccurate legal citations, mischaracterized case law, fabricated quotations attributed to Owen v. Blackhawk, and false quotations purportedly from the amended decree and hearing transcripts. The appellate court identified these errors, concluded they supported a potential ethics referral, and forwarded the decision to the State Bar for review.

The court granted Plaintiff's motion to strike portions of the Opening Brief after Defendant raised concerns that the brief included a non-existent quotation attributed to an existing case, a mischaracterization of an existing case, a citation to a non-existent case, and a miscitation of a case that did not address the asserted issue. The court noted counsel had been sanctioned in a separate case for citation-related deficiencies consistent with AI-generated hallucinations. The stricken portions were removed and the ALJ decision was affirmed.

The appellate court found Husband's counsel made multiple misleading or incorrect citations and attributed quotations to cases that do not contain them. The court noted some citations used incorrect reporters that pointed to unrelated decisions, concluded the cited authorities did not support counsel's propositions (and in some instances contradicted them), forwarded the decision to the State Bar for possible ethical violations, and awarded costs to the prevailing party.