[EDRM Editor’s Note: The opinions and positions are those of the author.]
There is nothing new about courts asking a litigant to prepare an order, the litigant submitting an order that contained hallucinated authorities, and the court then signing the order. Litigant Forfeited Claim that Court Erred by Relying on Hallucinated/Fictional Cases (Mar. 11, 2026).
In a recent decision, the Court of Appeals of Georgia called that “regrettable.” Henry County Schools v. Grant, 2026 WL 1677896 (Ct. Apls. Ga. Jun. 10, 2026). The court wrote:
Critically, the trial court’s order, which was drafted by the plaintiffs’ attorney, contains several mistakes. In addition to citing federal law applicable to motions to dismiss and confusing constitutional claims with employment discrimination, it also ignores binding Georgia precedent, mis-quotes cases cited, and relies on at least one hallucinated case. We find it troubling that counsel submitted such an order to the trial court, and regrettable that the trial court failed to identify any of these errors. See Payne v. State, Case No. S26A0459, slip op. at 1-5(1)-(4), 2026 WL 1215905 (Ga. May 5, 2026) (sanctioning counsel who prepared order citing hallucinated cases, remanding to the trial court to issue a new order omitting such citations, and encouraging trial courts to engage in a careful review of materials submitted to it)…. Accordingly, we must, yet again, remind counsel, and lower courts, of their professional responsibilities and obligations in the use of artificial intelligence.
Id. at *3 (emphasis added).
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