Incident Tracker / South Africa
Parker v Forsyth NNO and Others (1585/20) [2023] ZAGPRD 1
·Regional Court, Johannesburg (Gauteng Regional Division)·ZACosts order
In South Africa, the Johannesburg Regional Court found that the plaintiff's attorneys supplied opposing lawyers with fictitious ChatGPT authorities without verification. It found no intention to mislead the court and ordered attorney-and-client costs against the plaintiff for the later hearing period. It did not impose personal costs on the lawyers or refer them to the regulator.
- Court
- Regional Court, Johannesburg (Gauteng Regional Division)
- Date
- 2023-06-29
- Who used the AI
- Lawyer
- AI tool
- ChatGPT
- Conduct
- The plaintiff's attorneys sent opposing attorneys fictitious authorities obtained through ChatGPT without checking them. The court found that the cases had not been submitted to it as binding authorities and that counsel and attorney had not intended to mislead it. It ordered the plaintiff to pay attorney-and-client costs for the period after 27 March through 22 May 2023.
- Outcome
- Costs order
- Penalty
- No monetary penalty recorded
- Regulatory outcome
- No separate regulatory disposition recorded
- Status
- Verified against listed sources
- Last checked
- 2026-09-21
Primary sources for this incident
- Parker v Forsyth NNO, case 1585/20, Regional Court judgment (29 Jun 2023), paragraphs 84–93 — court document mirrored by Damien Charlotin
- Parker v Forsyth NNO [2023] ZAGPRD 1 — LawLibrary catalogue; automated access blocked on 21 Sep 2026
- Leads from Damien Charlotin's AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC BY 4.0), damiencharlotin.com; each decision re-read and coded by SafeLegalAI
Related regulation records for this incident
Similar incidents on the record
- Mavundla v MEC: Department of Co-Operative Government and Traditional Affairs, KZN (7940/2024P) [2025] ZAKZPHC 22025-01-08 · High Court of South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal Division, Pietermaritzburg · Regulatory referralIn this KwaZulu-Natal High Court (South Africa) leave-to-appeal ruling, the applicant's papers cited non-existent authorities generated via ChatGPT by a candidate attorney and unchecked by counsel. Bezuidenhout J called…
- Tan Hai Peng Micheal and another v Tan Cheong Joo and another [2026] SGHC 492026-03-06 · General Division of the High Court of the Republic of Singapore · Costs orderIn this Singapore High Court (General Division) costs ruling, S Mohan J made personal costs orders of S$5,000 each against the counsel on record and his supervising solicitor for filing fictitious AI-generated citations…
- Johnson v. Dunn, No. 2:21-cv-01701-AMM (N.D. Ala.), 792 F. Supp. 3d 12412025-07-23 · US District Court, Northern District of Alabama (Southern Division) · SanctionsIn the Northern District of Alabama, Judge Anna M. Manasco publicly reprimanded Butler Snow attorneys Matthew B. Reeves, William J. Cranford and William R. Lunsford for filing two motions containing citations hallucinat…
- Zhang v Chen, 2024 BCSC 2852024-02-20 · Supreme Court of British Columbia · Costs orderThe first reported Canadian case of AI-hallucinated citations: a Vancouver family lawyer cited two ChatGPT-invented cases in a notice of application, was ordered to pay costs personally, had her other files reviewed, an…
Summary record: the facts above are verified against the listed sources, but the court's reasoning and later dispositions have not yet been written up. It is excluded from search indexes until that is done.
Cite this record
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “Parker v Forsyth NNO and Others (1585/20) [2023] ZAGPRD 1”, safelegalai.com/tracker/parker-v-forsyth (accessed 2026-10-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.