The Arizona Court of Appeals has sanctioned a self-represented litigant for filing a brief containing case citations that were hallucinated by generative artificial intelligence, ruling for the first time in a published Arizona opinion that submitting fake AI-generated authorities to a court is sanctionable conduct, even without any intent to deceive.
The background: The case began as a probate dispute among three siblings following the death of their 93-year-old mother.
- One of the daughters applied to administer the estate and discovered there were no assets to marshal because they were titled in her brother’s name. She petitioned for formal probate of the will and appointment as personal representative, which the trial court granted.
- The brother, representing himself, appealed, raising arguments about due process and errors of fact and law.
- His opening brief contained no citations to the record and eight legal citations, six of which were deficient. Some cited real cases for principles the cases did not support, some pointed to the wrong pages, and two cited cases that simply do not exist.
- Ordered to appear at a show cause hearing, the appellant explained he had relied on artificial-intelligence-assisted research tools and admitted he did nothing to independently verify the citations before filing.
The ruling: The Appeals Court affirmed the trial court’s order, struck every inaccurate and false citation from the brief, and ordered the appellant to pay the portion of the appellee’s attorney fees incurred because of the hallucinated citations.
- Judge Brian Y. Furuya of the Arizona Court of Appeals, who wrote that using generative AI is not itself objectionable and holds real promise for enhancing access to justice, provided the person signing the brief verifies that every cited case is real and accurately cited.
- Left unchecked, however, the judge wrote that generative AI “is an unreliable narrator and researcher,” warning that careless use can produce filings that look like competent legal work but “very often are not.”
- All litigants, whether attorneys or representing themselves, remain personally responsible for the accuracy of their filings, and that duty cannot be offloaded to any technological tool.
- The appellant’s lack of legal training and lack of intent to deceive were no defense. “Submission of hallucinated case citations, intentional or unintentional, is unjustifiable,” Judge Furuya wrote. “To accept a defense of lack of ill intent would legitimize reckless indifference to the truth and accuracy of court filings and tolerate some level of misrepresentation. This we will not do.”
- Because the brief contained no valid supporting authority once the bad citations were stricken, the claims were groundless, and the appellant’s indifference to verifying them meant they were not made in good faith.
- The court noted it was joining courts nationwide that have sanctioned both attorneys and self-represented litigants for filing briefs containing hallucinations, citing a tracker that has catalogued more than 1,700 instances worldwide.
