Cases › made things up › LR-2026-0655
Federal appeals court refers Anthony Sabatini over AI-faked citations
Preliminary Why: Publisher not yet named · subject to change
Status: no action reported
No source states: loss or records, developer and model, agent tool, could do, deployer, industry.
A lawyer, Anthony Sabatini, filed appellate briefs in a pandemic-era lawsuit brought by aviation workers against Atlas Air and Flight Services International over COVID vaccine, testing and mask policies. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the briefs contained fabricated case citations: the opening brief relied on at least eight nonexistent cases. After opposing counsel flagged the problem, Sabatini filed an untimely reply acknowledging the citations were erroneous or unverifiable and sought to withdraw eight cases. The withdrawn cases did not match the hallucinated ones, and all eight were also hallucinated. The court referred him to its Committee on Lawyer Qualifications and Conduct for possible discipline. Appellate costs were taxed against his clients.
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ApplicationGrounding and fact checks · Human approval for high-impact actions · Output filtering and redaction · People told they are dealing with AI
Evidence
No source states: what the AI was doing, what it reached or did, when it happened, when it was found, how many records were exposed, the direct loss, a count of the other parties affected, any court case, the cause, what set it off, what was done.
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What happened, in order
Not dated in the sources:
- Opening brief filed relying on at least eight nonexistent cases.
- After opposing counsel flagged the problem, Sabatini filed an untimely reply seeking to withdraw eight cases.
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The referral is a possible-discipline referral, not a finding of discipline. No remediation is reported in the sources.
LR-2026-0655 · version 1 · published 2026-11-01 after automatic checks; not yet checked field by field by a person · JSON