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Courts on AI / Fabricated or misquoted citations

Viral Bhagat v. Anuja Sharad Shah

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York · Federal district courts · NY · · No. P. 16(b)(4)(E)(i). (ECF 639 · report and recommendation

On 2026-04-06, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York admonished the self-represented defendant to verify that cited cases exist and support the propositions asserted in future AI-assisted filings. A self-represented party submitted a motion with false quotations and fabricated or nonexistent authorities, including In re SunEdison, Inc. Sec. Litig.

Disposition
The court admonished the self-represented defendant to verify that cited cases exist and support the propositions asserted in future AI-assisted filings.
Recorded conduct
The motion used false quotations and fabricated or nonexistent authorities, including In re SunEdison, Inc. Sec. Litig, which the court found nonexistent, misquoted, or unsupported. — outcome: warning; 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.

motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Nor was I able to locate the quoted text in any case available on Westlaw. I therefore conclude that the citation is an AI-generated hallucination. I understand the difficulties of litigating pro se and the reasons why a pro se litigant might choose to use AI- generated filings. However, Defendant is admonished that pro se litigants are obligated to review the cases cited in their filings to confirm that they exist and stand for the proposition for which they are cited. 7. I issued an order (ECF 656) directing Plaintiff to refile his Exhibit 1 attached to ECF 652, which was to be a redacted version of the document at ECF 644-2. However, upon further examination of the voluminous docket, it appears that an unredacted version of the document is already on the docket and has been on the docket at ECF 572-32 since November 14, 2025. Nor did Plaintiff ever make an application to have ECF 572-32 sealed in the nearly five months it has been on the docket. Accordingly, the document at ECF 644-2 shall be unsealed. See Gambale

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