AI incident #1600 ·
Purportedly AI-Generated False Citations in Arizona Probate Appeal Reportedly Led to Sanctions Against Self-Represented Appellant
What happened
Self-represented appellant Jeffrey Kotchka reportedly used purported AI tools to prepare an opening brief in a probate dispute involving his late mother's estate. The Arizona Court of Appeals found six of its eight citations deficient, including two nonexistent cases, and said Kotchka had made no effort to verify them. The court affirmed the appointment of his sister, Kim Dineen, as personal representative, ordering Kotchka to pay her attorney fees attributable to addressing the false citations.
Only the incident metadata is stored here. The underlying news reports are on the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0); use the links above to read them.
News reports (1)
Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Jeffrey Kotchka, Pro Se Litigants, Litigants
- Alleged developer
- Large Language Model Developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Jeffrey Kotchka, Kim Dineen, Pro Se Litigants, Judicial Integrity, Epistemic Integrity, Arizona Court Of Appeals, Litigants
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
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- Causal entity
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