Incident Tracker / United States (federal)
Downing v. Dwayne Brown
On 2026-05-20, in Downing v. Dwayne Brown, et al, the Eleventh Circuit struck fabricated-authority portions of the brief and affirmed dismissal. A self-represented appellant filed an appellate brief using record or transcript quotations not found in the record, quotations that did not appear in the cited source, and nonexistent or hallucinated authorities.
- Court
- United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
- Date
- 2026-05-20
- Who used the AI
- Litigant in person
- AI tool
- Not identified in the record
- Conduct
- Downing’s appellate brief relied on fabricated authorities, including a nonexistent United States v. Jones citation and fake quotations attributed to real Eleventh Circuit decisions. The court struck the portions of her brief containing fabricated legal authorities.
- Outcome
- Filing struck
- Penalty
- No monetary penalty recorded
- Regulatory outcome
- No separate regulatory disposition recorded
- Status
- Provisional — written by the court-decisions pipeline, awaiting the editor
- Last checked
- 2026-09-08
Primary sources for this incident
Related regulation records for this incident
No related regulation record has been linked to this incident yet.
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Cite this record
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “Downing v. Dwayne Brown”, safelegalai.com/tracker/downing-v-dwayne-brown-et-al (accessed 2026-10-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.