Aug 12, 2025Confirmed
DC appeals court strikes Deutsche Bank brief after lawyer's AI search tool produced four nonexistent case citations
AI loose in the worldMisinformationDERIVED
Approved by person, Oct 11, 2026. How entries are approved
In Douglas v. Deutsche Bank National Trust Co., attorney Loishirl W. Hall said he used Google's generative AI search tool to find case law and did not verify the citations. The D.C. Court of Appeals found four cited cases did not exist, struck the brief, and referred the matter for disciplinary review.
What this means for youAI search tools can invent sources that look real, and a professional who files them can face penalties. If you use AI for work with legal, financial or official consequences, check every source yourself before relying on it.
Sources
- AI Incident Databasehttps://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1682
Data from the AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. IAAI-21.
Source data license: CC BY-SA 4.0 (database). Report contents keep their own rights; reports.text, submissions, images and videos are excluded from the data license.
Covered by snapshot 45
da93f03b406f409940d0a6ef47b526607f82ebf457d98f69299b88aceede576a
This entry is record number 2359. It has not been edited since it was approved; the hash above would not match if it had. How to verify