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Courts on AI / Fabricated or misquoted citations

Burches v. Equifax Information Services, LLC, et al.

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana · Federal district courts · LA · · No. 2:25-cv-00804-SM-MBN · order

Fabricated or misquoted citations

The Eastern District of Louisiana on 2026-05-11 ordered the self-represented plaintiff to pay $500 for filing unverified or fabricated authorities in Burches v. Equifax Information Services, LLC, et al. The self-represented plaintiff filed a reply brief with two fabricated case citations, one false case quotation, and one mischaracterized case citation, including Hays v. HCA Holdings.

Disposition
The court ordered the self-represented plaintiff to pay $500 for filing unverified or fabricated authorities.
Recorded conduct
The self-represented plaintiff filed a reply brief with two fabricated case citations, one false case quotation, and one mischaracterized case citation, including Hays v. HCA Holdings and Turner v. Murphy Oil USA. — outcome: fine; actor: litigant in person; $500
Canonical record
Incident tracker entry — verified outcome, regulator disposition and related rules

What the court wrote

Verbatim from the court's document (public domain). Ellipses mark omitted text; nothing is paraphrased.

m. BACKGROUND Plaintiff has repeatedly filed briefs containing fabricated, inaccurate, or unverifiable legal citations. The issue first arose in connection with Plaintiff’s Motion for Leave to File a Third Amended Complaint,1 when Defendant Trans Union LLC (“Trans Union”) filed an Ex Parte Motion for Leave to File a Surreply,2 representing that “[a] closer examination of Plaintiff’s Motion reveals Plaintiff’s reliance on fabricated and/or non-existent legal authorities. ”3 The Court granted the Motion,4 and Trans Union’s Surreply was filed onto the record. 5 The Court then set oral argument on the Motion. 6 Before oral argument, Plaintiff filed a Notice of Clarification admitting the citations in his Reply were fabricated and apologizing for the error.

Authorities cited in the passage: Plaintiff cited a purported holding from Hays v. HCA Holdings, Inc · Plaintiff cited Turner v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., 2006 WL 1984362 (E.D. La. July 13, 2006)

compiled by the Cognesio LLP editorial teammethodas of 2026-09-07v0.1.1coding CC BY 4.0JSON Hugging Face GitHub