Courts on AI / Fabricated or misquoted citations

Gully v Varghese

Supreme Court of New York · State trial courts · NY · 2026-05-12 · No. 900514-25 · order

On 2026-05-12, in Gully v Varghese, Supreme Court of New York struck the self-represented plaintiff's reply submission because its case citations could not be located. A self-represented litigant filed opposition papers using nonexistent or hallucinated authorities. The document links the problem to GAI.

Disposition: Plaintiff’s opposition papers were struck and summary judgment was denied.
Recorded conduct: Gully’s pro se opposition papers contained AI hallucinations and nonexistent authorities. The court struck the defective filings. — outcome: filing struck; 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.

Having considered the parties' submissions, I find that imposition of a sanction on plaintiff is appropriate here. Initially, the purportedly authoritative cases cited by plaintiff are, indeed, fabrications, and appear to be "hallucinations" created by an artificial intelligence tool. Although the case names appear to mimic those of actual parties to real rulings issued by the Appellate Division, Third Department, the cases bearing these names concern entirely different matters, and the citations themselves are fake.

Authorities cited in the passage: 22 NYCRR 130-1.1

Court document: damiencharlotin.com
Read: 2026-09-07 · court document read from a public copy; the court's own copy was not found online when checked (see notes)provisional
Found via: charlotin-hallucinations-db
Notes: Read from the copy held by Damien Charlotin's AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC BY 4.0) of the court-authored document. court site blocks automated access (checked www.nycourts.gov) Official copy not obtained 2026-09-08: court site blocks automated access (checked www.nycourts.gov) (checked www.nycourts.gov). Re-coded from the document 2026-09-08 (independent second read).

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