Connecticut Supreme Court Weighs Sanctions After Lawyers Submit AI-Hallucinated Citations

Connecticut Supreme Court Weighs Sanctions After Lawyers Submit AI-Hallucinated Citations

The Connecticut Supreme Court is weighing how to handle a case in which lawyers submitted court filings containing AI-generated citations that do not exist, according to reporting from the Hartford Courant and GovTech.

What Happened

Attorneys Ian G. Gottlieb, David E. Rosenberg, and Paul J. Small, partners at Wallingford-based GLG Law, submitted a brief to a lower court containing fabricated case references produced by generative AI. The citations appeared legitimate but pointed to cases that were never decided.

The lawyers are representing a Brooklyn-based landlord in an eviction dispute involving a Middletown tenant who had challenged a rent increase before the town's Fair Rent Commission. A brief filed by the Yale Law School Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, which supported the tenant, identified the hallucinated citations.

Court Response

The Connecticut Supreme Court ordered the attorneys to submit a written explanation. The justices are considering whether to impose sanctions or defer that question while hearing the underlying landlord-tenant dispute.

Broader Significance

The case is part of a growing wave of AI-related misconduct in legal settings. Multiple courts across the U.S. have now imposed sanctions on lawyers who submitted AI-generated filings without verifying citations. Several states are drafting new court rules requiring lawyers to disclose AI use in filings.