01 · What happened
In a personal injury case against the airline Avianca in federal court in New York, the plaintiff’s lawyers filed a brief citing decisions found with ChatGPT. The judge found that six of them were “bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations”. On 22 June 2023 the court fined two lawyers and their firm US$5,000 and ordered them to write to their client and to each judge named as the author of a fake opinion.
02 · Reported cause
One lawyer stated that he had never used ChatGPT for legal research before and was unaware that its content could be false. The court made clear the sanction was not for using AI but for not checking, and for standing by the cases after they were questioned.
03 · What they changed
The underlying case was dismissed the same day on other grounds, the statute of limitations.
04 · Sources
Facts on this page are limited to what these sources report. Checked in September 2026.