McCarthy v. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (3d Cir. 2026), No. 24-2704
warning
The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reprimanded an attorney whose opening brief contained AI-hallucinated case summaries and a nonexistent authority that he failed to correct. As its first AI-hallucination case, the court withheld monetary sanctions but warned that future violators may face them.
- Date of decision/order
- 2026-03-27
- Court
- US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
- Jurisdiction
- US-FEDERAL
- AI tool
- AI (unspecified)
- Conduct
- Petitioner's counsel filed an opening brief with incorrect, hallucinated case summaries and one nonexistent authority generated by AI, and failed to correct them after the government flagged the errors. The court reprimanded counsel under its Disciplinary Rules and directed notification of all courts of his admission and the National Disciplinary Data Bank.
- Consequence
- See outcome
Sources
Cite this incident
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, "McCarthy v. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (3d Cir. 2026), No. 24-2704", safelegalai.com/tracker/mccarthy-v-dea (accessed 2026-07-16). Data: CC BY 4.0.