AI incident ·
D.C. Court of Appeals Struck Deutsche Bank National Trust Company Brief After Attorney Used Google Generative AI Search Tool and Filed Four Nonexistent Case Citations
On this page 7 sections
In brief
An AI system built by Google and deployed by Loishirl W. Hall, Legal professionals and 1 other allegedly harmed Parties to legal proceedings, Legal clients and 4 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 2 reports
What happened
In Douglas v. Deutsche Bank National Trust Co., attorney Loishirl W. Hall acknowledged using Google's generative AI search tool to locate case authority and failing to verify citations before an appellate brief was filed. The D.C. Court of Appeals found four cited cases did not exist, said the filing misdirected the court and burdened judicial resources, struck Deutsche Bank's brief, and referred the matter for disciplinary review.
Laws on record for this risk area
No instrument on record yet covers this risk area where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (2)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Loishirl W. Hall Legal professionals Lawyers
- Alleged developer
- Alleged harmed party
- Parties to legal proceedings Legal clients Judicial integrity Epistemic integrity District of Columbia Court of Appeals Courts
AI systems implicated
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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- Intent
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- Timing
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- Harm level
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- Sectors
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Related incidents
Linked by editors or by text similarity in the source dataset.
Source record: incident #1682 on the AI Incident Database · all 2 reports