Incident Tracker / United States (federal)
Obi v. Cook County
On 2026-04-09, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois struck the motion and imposed a $4,999 sanction for repeated AI-generated fake cases, quotations, and statements of law and fact. A self-represented party submitted a complaint with 13 false quotations and fabricated or nonexistent authorities, including Marshall v. Marshall and Andrade v. Arby Concessions.
- Court
- United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
- Date
- 2026-04-09
- Who used the AI
- Litigant in person
- AI tool
- Not identified in the record
- Conduct
- Obi generated each brief using AI; her Rule 59(e) motion and replies contained AI hallucinations, including 13 hallucinated cases, quotes, and statements in the motion, a nonexistent Andrade case, fabricated language from Marshall and from the court’s prior order, and similar violations after at least 17 earlier fake items.
- Outcome
- Fine
- Penalty
- US$5,000
- Regulatory outcome
- No separate regulatory disposition recorded
- Status
- Provisional — written by the court-decisions pipeline, awaiting the editor
- Last checked
- 2026-09-07
Primary sources for this incident
Related regulation records for this incident
No related regulation record has been linked to this incident yet.
Similar incidents on the record
- Chirece C. v. Commissioner of Social Security, No. 25-11554 (E.D. Mich. 2026)2026-09-24 · United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan · FineIn Michigan federal court, Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Stafford fined a Social Security claimant's lawyer $500 for AI-generated fictitious citations she admitted not checking. The same lawyer had been sanctioned in July…
- Carter v. City of Buffalo, No. 25-CV-740 (W.D.N.Y.)2026-09-08 · US District Court, Western District of New York · WarningIn the US District Court for the Western District of New York, self-represented plaintiff Zakkiyya Carter used case law the court said did not support her propositions, after an earlier screening order. Judge John L. Si…
- Booker v. The Kroger Co., No. 1:26-cv-02006-SDG (N.D. Ga.)2026-08-28 · US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division · FineThe US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia fined employment plaintiff's lawyer Christopher Johnson USD 8,000, payable to the court's sanctions fund, for citing four nonexistent or misrepresented authorit…
- Adams v. Matrix Providers, No. 1:23-cv-01996 (D. Colo.)2026-08-27 · US District Court for the District of Colorado · FineThe US District Court for the District of Colorado fined counsel Ms Pearson USD 1,000 after her brief cited a nonexistent case and attributed a quotation to Justice Scalia from an opinion dated 2020, four years after hi…
Cite this record
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “Obi v. Cook County”, safelegalai.com/tracker/ifeoma-delliane-chinedu-obi-v-cook-county-illinois-et-al-1 (accessed 2026-10-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.