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During a child custody and divorce appeal in Nebraska, a self-represented litigant submitted a legal brief containing fictitious case citations and inaccurate legal propositions generated by artificial intelligence, leading the Nebraska Supreme Court to strike the brief.
The Nebraska Supreme Court said self-represented divorce litigant Jarrod Shannon's appellate brief contained fictitious citations and incorrect legal claims resulting from his admitted use of generative AI. It struck the brief and reviewed his challenge to a contempt order only for obvious errors before affirming the order.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
Also classified as
The generative AI model failed to perform reliably by hallucinating nonexistent legal cases when prompted for legal research.
The generative AI system fabricated legal citations and propositions of law, which the litigant then submitted as genuine legal authority to the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed
The incident was caused by a human litigant's decision to use a generative AI tool to write a legal brief, which unintentionally produced fabricated citations that were submitted to the court.
Added categories peak at 2: Minor (Epistemic Harm, Direct)
A self-represented litigant in Nebraska submitted an appellate brief containing fake legal citations generated by AI. The Nebraska Supreme Court struck the brief and affirmed a lower court order. This is a localized civil legal issue with negligible national security implications.
The AI system acted as a writing and research assistant to the pro se litigant, generating text and legal citations that the human user then reviewed and submitted to the court.
Limited Risk: The generative AI tool used to write the brief functions as a chatbot or text generator, which falls under the transparency obligations of Limited Risk systems.
The AI was used by the litigant to draft legal arguments and generate citations, acting as a writing and research assistant.
The court opinion explicitly details the litigant's admission of using generative AI, the specific consequences (striking the brief), and the presence of fictitious citations, leaving no ambiguity about the AI's role.
None
Technology
Generative AI Hallucination
The generative AI tool used by the litigant fabricated nonexistent legal cases.
Lack of Built-in Verification
The AI model used had no integrated mechanism to verify legal citation truth.
Data Inputs
Unreliable AI Training Data
The model's training data allowed the generation of plausible but fake citations.
Human Factors
Pro Se Litigant Misuse of AI
A self-represented litigant used generative AI without verifying outputs.
Negligent Legal Research
The appellant failed to cross-reference AI-generated cases with official records.
Lack of Technical Literacy
The litigant did not understand the risk of AI hallucination in legal contexts.
Process and Methods
Absence of Verification Step
No process was followed to manually check citation validity before filing.
Improper Brief Preparation
Drafting process relied entirely on AI outputs without professional oversight.
Management
Poor Personal Case Management
The litigant failed to manage his appeal responsibly, leading to bad filings.
Regulatory Environment
Evolving Legal Standards for AI
Rules for pro se AI use were not yet fully codified in local court rules.
AI system involved
Identified by automated extraction; can differ from the alleged developers above.
