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Courts on AI / Fabricated or misquoted citations

Arthur West v. Lower Duwamish Waterway Group

Washington Court of Appeals · State appellate courts · WA · · 2026 WL 1069752 · No. 87289-3-I · opinion

The Washington Court of Appeals on 2026-04-20 admonished the self-represented party for unverified or fabricated authorities and cautioned against repeating the citation misconduct in Arthur West v. Lower Duwamish Waterway Group. The self-represented party filed a brief with one fabricated case citation and one false case quotation.

Disposition
The court admonished the self-represented party for unverified or fabricated authorities and cautioned against repeating the citation misconduct.
Recorded conduct
The self-represented party filed a brief with one fabricated case citation and one false case quotation. — 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.

see also Telford, 95 Wn. App. at 162 & n. 17 (discussing 1991 Att'y Gen. Op. No. 5). This is not persuasive to the instant record. 13 Atcertainpointsinhisbriefing,Westprovidesfictitiousquotationsfromexistentcases. Werebukesuchlackof candor as detrimental and offensive to the legal process and not worthy of judicial review. Everyone, including pro se litigants, are responsible to confirm their pleadings, motions, briefs, and other filings are accurate and do not contain any citations that are invented or hallucinated by generative artificial intelligence (AI) or any other source. See RAP 10. 3(a)(6); West v. Thurston County, 168 Wn. App. 162, 187, 275 P. 3d 1200 (2012).

Authorities cited in the passage: West v. Thurston County, 168 Wn

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