Incident Tracker / United States (federal)
United States v. Cohen, No. 18-CR-602 (JMF) (S.D.N.Y.)
·US District Court, Southern District of New York·US-FEDOther
In the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Jesse M. Furman declined to sanction attorney David M. Schwartz, who filed a motion for Michael Cohen citing three non-existent cases that Cohen had obtained from Google Bard; the court found negligence but no bad faith, and imposed no penalty or referral.
- Court
- US District Court, Southern District of New York
- Date
- 2024-03-20
- Who used the AI
- Lawyer
- AI tool
- Google Bard
- Conduct
- Attorney David M. Schwartz filed a motion for early termination of Michael Cohen's supervised release citing three non-existent Second Circuit decisions that Cohen, a disbarred lawyer and the defendant, had obtained from Google Bard and emailed to him; Schwartz did not check them, believing they came from co-counsel E. Danya Perry, who later flagged that she could not verify them.
- Outcome
- Other
- Penalty
- No monetary penalty recorded
- Regulatory outcome
- No separate regulatory disposition recorded
- Status
- Verified against listed sources
- Last checked
- 2026-09-04
What was fabricated or misused
- United States v. Figueroa-Florez, 64 F.4th 223 (2d Cir. 2022) — cited as a Second Circuit supervised-release decision, but the case does not exist
- United States v. Ortiz (No. 21-3391), 2022 WL 4424741 (2d Cir. Oct. 11, 2022) — cited as a Second Circuit supervised-release decision, but the case does not exist
- United States v. Amato, 2022 WL 1669877 (2d Cir. May 10, 2022) — cited as a Second Circuit supervised-release decision, but the case does not exist
What the court said
“There was only one problem: The cases do not exist.”
“Cohen had obtained the cases and summaries from Google Bard, which he “did not realize . . . was a generative text service that, like Chat-GPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not. Instead, [he had] understood it to be a super-charged search engine . . . .””
“As Schwartz himself concedes, it was plainly his responsibility to review the citations before putting them in a submission to the Court.”
“His citation to non-existent cases is embarrassing and certainly negligent, perhaps even grossly negligent. But the Court cannot find that it was done in bad faith.”
Timeline
- Judge Pauley sentenced Cohen to prison followed by three years of supervised release.
- Cohen emailed Schwartz three Google Bard cases and summaries.
- Schwartz filed Cohen's fourth motion for early termination of supervised release.
- Court ordered Schwartz to explain the three non-existent citations.
- Court denied early termination and declined sanctions for lack of bad faith.
Why this case matters
United States v. Cohen is a boundary marker in the tracker. Unlike Mata v Avianca and Park v Kim, the court found the citations fake but declined sanctions because sua sponte sanctions in that posture required subjective bad faith. The record still faulted counsel for not checking cases before filing and made clear that a client, even a disbarred lawyer, could rely on counsel's professional review. Later courts, including Benjamin v. Costco, used Cohen as a comparator when deciding whether facts showed bad faith.
Practice note
When a client supplies authorities, counsel should treat them as leads, not research. Before filing, counsel must confirm that each case exists and supports the stated proposition, even if the client says another lawyer suggested it. If the source is unclear, ask who found the case and verify it in an official or commercial legal database.
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, “United States v. Cohen, No. 18-CR-602 (JMF) (S.D.N.Y.)”, safelegalai.com/tracker/united-states-v-cohen (accessed 2026-10-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.