Courts on AI / Fabricated or misquoted citations
Eagle Township v. Shaun VanAlstine
Michigan Court of Appeals · State appellate courts · MI · · 2026 WL 1194667 · No. 375687 · opinion
The Michigan Court of Appeals on 2026-04-30 affirmed summary disposition for the township and noted the appellant’s cited Michigan Supreme Court case was hallucinated in Eagle Township v. Shaun VanAlstine. The self-represented party filed a submission with one fabricated case citation.
- Disposition
- The court affirmed summary disposition for the township and noted the appellant’s cited Michigan Supreme Court case was hallucinated.
- Recorded conduct
- The self-represented party filed a submission with one fabricated case citation. — outcome: other; actor: litigant in person
- 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.
The Supreme Court case cited by VanAlstine, Highland Park v Grifith Motors, 336 Mich 588, 592; 59 NW2d 54 (1953), does not exist—it's a hallucinated citation that is likely the product of generative artificial intelligence (AI). *6 VanAlstine contends that he “made diligent efforts to comply with local requirements, including consulting with Clinton County Building officials,” and there is “no evidence of health or safety risks caused by the structure with the zoning requirement. ” VanAlstine began construction before applying for the required building and zoning permits, and he stated that construction was “mostly complete” before he requested a zoning variance. “[E]veryone dealing with a municipality and its agents is charged with knowledge of the restrictive provisions of lawfully adopted ordinances.
compiled by the Cognesio LLP editorial teammethodas of 2026-09-07v0.1.1coding CC BY 4.0JSON Hugging Face GitHub
Hugging Face