Skip to content

Incident Tracker / Canada

Reddy v Saroya, 2025 ABCA 322

·Court of Appeal of Alberta·CAPending

In Alberta, the Court of Appeal held counsel responsible for a contractor-drafted factum containing seven nonexistent authorities. Its September 2025 judgment invited submissions on personal costs against lead counsel. The reported January 2026 costs order remains unconfirmed against its primary text; no amount from that later report is recorded here.

Court
Court of Appeal of Alberta
Date
2025-09-26
Who used the AI
Lawyer
AI tool
Not identified in the record
Conduct
An appellant's factum contained seven nonexistent authorities, six purportedly from the Alberta Court of Appeal. Lead counsel had retained a contractor and questioned the contractor's denial of large-language-model use after the errors emerged. The court held counsel responsible for verifying the filing and invited submissions on a possible personal costs award.
Outcome
Pending
Penalty
No monetary penalty recorded
Regulatory outcome
No separate regulatory disposition recorded
Status
Verified against listed sources
Last checked
2026-09-21

What was fabricated or misused

  • Seven nonexistent authorities in the appellant's original factum, six purportedly Alberta Court of Appeal decisions (paragraph 74)

Timeline

  1. Court of Appeal decision recorded seven non-existent authorities in the appellant's factum.
  2. Decision recorded counsel's account of outsourcing the factum and his doubts about the contractor's denial of large-language-model use.
  3. Decision signalled personal costs against the lawyer whose name appeared on the filing.

Why this case matters

Reddy concerns counsel's responsibility for a contractor-drafted factum. The Court of Appeal rejected any suggestion that outsourcing moved the duty to verify authorities away from counsel. Paragraph 87 invited submissions on whether lead counsel should personally pay some or all of the respondent's appeal costs; it did not itself fix a personal award. The later reported 2026 ABCA 20 order still requires primary-text verification.

Practice note

A lawyer who signs a factum should verify every authority personally or supervise a recorded verification process before filing. Contractor work should be treated like associate or student work: citations checked in an official or recognised database, holdings matched to the proposition, and any uncertain authority removed before the document bears counsel's name.

Primary sources for this incident

Related regulation records for this incident

Similar incidents on the record

  • Ahmed v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 1202 (IMM-3886-26)2026-09-28 · Federal Court (Canada) · DismissalIn Canada, the Federal Court refused a late filing in a refugee judicial review because the proposed memorandum cited five cases that could not be found and misstated others. Justice Lafrenière inferred unchecked AI use…
  • Law Society of Ontario v. Lee, 2026 ONLSTH 1362026-07-16 · Law Society Tribunal (Ontario), Hearing Division · SuspensionThe Law Society Tribunal suspended Toronto lawyer Jisuh Lee's licence for six months and ordered CAD 10,000 in costs after she filed a factum containing AI-generated fictitious or irrelevant precedents in a family law p…
  • Kibondo-Kilongozi v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 9282026-07-10 · Federal Court of Canada · WarningIn a judicial review in the Federal Court of Canada concerning a Congolese child's adoption-based visa, Justice Gascon expressly found that a Federal Court of Appeal decision cited by the applicants' counsel did not exi…
  • Hussein v. Canada (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship), 2025 FC 1060; 2025 FC 11382025-06-24 · Federal Court of Canada · Costs orderIn Canada's Federal Court, applicant's counsel used Visto.ai in an immigration matter and filed submissions relying on non-existent cases without declaring the AI use. Associate Judge Catharine Moore found the conduct c…

Cite this record

SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “Reddy v Saroya, 2025 ABCA 322”, safelegalai.com/tracker/reddy-v-saroya (accessed 2026-10-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.

Report an issue with this record →