Last week, Joel Pollak reported at Breitbart:

A lawyer in California was hit with sanctions by the courts after it was discovered that he had been citing cases that did not exist — and that were completely made up by artificial intelligence (AI) programs.

“California Lawyer Punished for Using AI That Cited Fake Cases,” September 18, 2025

The case was Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P. (B331918, Sept. 12, 2025), Division Three of the Second District. The plaintiff/appellant’s attorney was sanctioned (fined) $10,000 and reported to the state bar when it came out that “nearly all of the legal quotations in his appellate briefs were invented by generative AI tools and had never appeared in any published case.” (Daily Journal)

The Daily Journal (a California law publication), which reported the story on September 16, notes,

By now, most attorneys are familiar with the limitations of artificial intelligence–particularly its tendency to produce fabricated citations and unreliable authority–but the California Court of Appeal has now made clear that those “hallucinations” can carry very real consequences.

And the Court was clear as to the reasons why it was publishing the opinion: “We … publish this opinion as a warning. Simply stated, no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations–whether provided by generative AI or any other source–that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified.” (emphasis in original).

Traditional judges have always been fans of non-fiction in the courtroom

It’s good to know that the law profession continues to demand truth, not fiction. A lawyer friend told Mind Matters News that that is definitely the tradition, recounting an incident from decades ago:

Back in the late 80s I had a very good older friend who was on a federal Circuit Court (a federal appellate court only one layer below the U.S. Supreme Court). He told me about receiving a brief that had cited a case as being “on all fours” with the case being appealed and dispositive of the primary issue. Unfortunately, the case had nothing whatsoever to do with the issues presented. My judge friend referred the firm’s associate that wrote the brief, and the partner that signed it, to the State Bar for disciplinary proceedings (i.e., potential disbarment). He also had both lawyers and their firm barred from ever appearing before that Circuit again.

People whose lives are non-fiction — who must raise funds for a serious legal issue — will doubtless be glad to learn that the courts are still non-fiction too. We must hope that the California approach to AI hallucinations is copied.