Cartagena v. Dixon

What the court wrote

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

I. Hallucinated Cases Before this Court begins its analysis, it must address Blackburn’s pervasive citations to non-existent authority in his briefing in support of Defendants’ motion to dismiss. As Plaintiff points out, Defendants’ brief contains several fake authorities and misrepresentations of the law. Opp. at 10-11; see also Dkt. 57. Blackburn does not dispute this and instead states that the miscited cases resulted from using the AI legal research platform Protégé in LexisNexis. Dkt. 58. LexisNexis, however, provided a letter to the Court refuting that Blackburn had a subscription to its AI tools, “Lexis+ AI” or “Protege.” Dkt. 96-1. Thus, the Court is not only concerned with Blackburn’s submission of hallucinated cases and misstatements of the law in his brief, but also with his misrepresentations to the Court regarding the source of his research. Sanctions may be imposed for submitting false or nonexistent legal authority to the Court. See, e.g., Flycatcher Corp. v. Affable Ave. LLC, No. 24-cv-09429 (KPF), 2026 WL 306683, at *12-13 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 5, 2026) (sanctioning attorney that submitted documents containing fake cases and misattributed quotes hallucinated by AI); Mata v. Avianca, Inc., 678 F. Supp. 3d 443, 459-66 (S.D.N.Y. 2023) (same). Alternatively, the Court may refer an attorney to the Grievance Committee for filing such non-existent authority. See, e.g., Park v. Kim, 91 F.4th 610, 613-16 (2d Cir. 2024) (per curiam) (referring to Second Circuit’s Committee on Admissions and Grievances an attorney whose brief, drafted in reliance on ChatGPT, included fake opinions). Blackburn has been sanctioned and warned in the past for litigation misconduct. For example, in Zunzurovski v. Fisher, No. 23-cv-10881 (DLC), 2024 WL 1434076 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 3, 2024), appeal dismissed, (July 30, 2024), Judge Denise Cote referred Blackburn to the Court’s Grievance Committee for failing to conduct a reasonable inquiry to support his assertion of

Authorities cited in the passage: s counsel contained multiple non-existent case citations and misstatements of law; court found pervasive · cases and noted counsel attributed errors to use of · Flycatcher Corp. v. Affable Ave. LLC, No. 24-cv-09429 · Mata v. Avianca · Park v. Kim · Zunzurovski v. Fisher, No. 23-cv-10881