Login | October 05, 2025
Ruling adds a potential new layer to cases involving AI-generated fake citations
SHERRY KARABIN
Legal Tech News
Published: October 3, 2025
Do lawyers have a duty to detect and report their opponents’ AI-generated fake citations?
As journalist and attorney Bob Ambrogi explains in a Sept. 16 story on LawSites (https://www.lawnext.com/2025/09/a-new-wrinkle-in-ai-hallucination-cases-lawyers-dinged-for-failing-to-detect-opponents-fake-citations.html), a recent decision in a California 2nd District Court of Appeal case has some wondering if it could become a requirement as the issue continues to become more prevalent.
Entitled “A New Wrinkle in AI Hallucination Cases: Lawyers Dinged for Failing to Detect Opponent’s Fake Citations,” the story looks at a judge’s decision to deny attorneys’ fees or costs to opposing counsel because counsel failed to report or even detect the plaintiff attorney’s fake citations.
Ambrogi says while the court found the basic facts of the appeal in the employment claims case Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P. to be “in most respects, unremarkable,” the reason the court elected to publish it is because of plaintiff attorney Amir Mostafavi’s extensive use of fake AI-generated citations and quotations.
He says Mostafavi used ChatGPT and other generative AI tools to “enhance” his appellate briefs, but failed to verify that the citations were real before filing.
The opinion states, “In total, appellant’s opening brief contains 23 case quotations, 21 of which are fabrications. Appellant’s reply brief contains many more fabricated quotations. And, both briefs are peppered with inaccurate citations that do not support the propositions for which they are cited.”
The court concluded the appeal was “frivolous,” declining “to permit the filing of revised briefs” and directing Mostafavi to pay $10,000 in sanctions.
As for the request for attorneys’ fees or costs, the opinion states, “We decline to order sanctions payable to opposing counsel. While we have no doubt that such sanctions would be appropriate in some cases, in the present case respondents did not alert the court to the fabricated citations and appear to have become aware of the issue only when the court issued its order to show cause.”
Ambrogi points out that even before the advent of generative AI, checking the validity of citations was a part of good lawyering, asking whether attorneys now have a heightened responsibility to do so because of the new technology.
“Will spotting AI hallucinations become part of the expected professional competence of practicing attorneys?
“The Noland court’s decision seems to suggest that, at minimum, lawyers who spot AI hallucinations and alert the court may be rewarded (or at least may be eligible to be rewarded), while those who miss them may not be entitled to fee-shifting even when the opposing brief is ultimately sanctioned,” says Ambrogi.