Federal judge suspects 'AI hallucinations' in legal filings
The Western District's chief judge orders Charlotte lawyers to a hearing
The following article appeared in the Nov. 19, 2025, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
Whoops: Federal judge cites errors in Charlotte lawyers’ legal filings and says they might have come from ‘AI hallucinations’
The chief federal judge in the district that includes Charlotte has ordered two Charlotte lawyers to a hearing this morning in Asheville to show why they shouldn’t be sanctioned for errors in legal briefs that might have stemmed from relying on artificial intelligence.
The order, filed last week by Chief U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger, comes in a case in which a former Morehead-Cain scholar at UNC Chapel Hill is suing the university, alleging he was improperly kicked out of school in 2022 following complaints by four women about sexual misconduct.
Referring to the man’s lawyers, the judge wrote he found “a number of citations in the Plaintiff’s filings that appear to be incorrect characterizations of the cited material and some that might constitute AI hallucinations.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Charlotte Ledger to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.