Courts on AI / Fabricated or misquoted citations

Whitesock v. Bird Global, Inc.

250th Judicial District Court of Travis County, Texas · State trial courts · TX · 2026-06-08 · No. D-1-GN-25-011111 · order

Fabricated or misquoted citations Competence, fees and billing

On 2026-06-08, in Erica Whitesock v. Bird Global, Inc., and The City of Austin, the Travis County district court granted the City of Austin's jurisdictional plea, dismissed those claims with prejudice, and awarded $10,000 in attorney fees. Counsel filed a response using quotations that did not appear in the cited source, nonexistent or hallucinated authorities, authorities used for propositions.

Disposition: The court granted the City of Austin’s plea to the jurisdiction, dismissed claims against the City with prejudice, and ordered counsel and his firm to pay the City $10,000 in attorney’s fees.
Recorded conduct: Plaintiffs’ response falsely quoted the Texas Tort Claims Act as containing a proprietary-function exception to immunity. Counsel Bradford Klager admitted the fake quote was fabricated by a generative AI chatbot and copied into the response. — outcome: costs order; actor: lawyer; $10,000
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.

✳ ✳ ✳ As counsel for the City of Austin has noted, Plaintiffs’ response to the City’s plea to the jurisdiction contains a non-existent quotation of a legal authority. The response falsely quotes the Texas Tort Claims Act as containing an exception to governmental immunity for “engaging in a proprietary function, including . . . allowing use of a public facility for compensation.” Counsel for Plaintiffs Bradford Klager admitted to the Court that this fake quote was completely fabricated by a generative artificial intelligence chatbot, and it was blindly copied and pasted into the Plaintiffs’ response without checking its veracity. Plaintiffs’ response also states that “CPRC § 75.002(d) waives the immunity of governmental entities for gross negligence causing personal injury on public land used for 06/08/2026 10:19:51 AM D-1-GN-25-011111 Velva L. Price District Clerk Travis County recreational purposes.” As the City’s attorney correctly notes, this provision does not address governmental immunity.

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 Official copy not published online as of 2026-09-08 (checked Travis County District Clerk public records, storage.courtlistener.com). Re-coded from the document 2026-09-08 (independent second read).

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