Carey v. Breakell

What the court wrote

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

Before addressing the substance of Defendants’ Motion, the Court calls attention to certain concerns it has regarding the Opposition Plaintiff’s counsel filed on March 10, 2026. In reviewing the Opposition, the Court located a number of case citations suggesting that the improper use of artificial intelligence may have occurred here. For example, the Opposition cites to “Larsen v. Davis Cnty. Sch. Dist., 2017 UT App 27, ¶¶ 14–16, 392 P.3d 1008 (Utah Ct. App. 2017)” and “Dale v. Bennett, 921 P.2d 466, 469 (Utah 1996)[,]” but the Court has been unable to locate these cases as cited on Westlaw. Citations to non-existent cases “undermine the integrity of court filings and evince a lack of diligence under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b).” “A fake opinion is not ‘existing law’ and citation to a fake opinion does not provide a non-frivolous ground for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law, or for establishing new law. An attempt to persuade a court or oppose an adversary by relying on fake opinions is an abuse of the adversary system.” The Court does not take suggestions of the improper use of artificial intelligence lightly. However, because, as the Court will discuss in full below, transfer of this action to the District of Arizona is appropriate, the Court will leave this issue to be handled according to the discretion of the receiving judge. As such, this issue does not impact the Court’s decision in this Order, which the Court makes according to the applicable law.

Authorities cited in the passage: Larsen v. Davis Cnty. Sch. Dist., 2017 UT App 27 · Dale v. Bennett, 921 P.2d 466 (Utah 1996) · Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b) · 28 U.S.C. §§ 1404, 1406