Podcast: Use of AI-Generated Legal Citations with Polly Tran

What duty to the court do litigants owe when using generative artificial intelligence tools for legal research? In the fifth episode of our In That Case podcast, Shook Associate Polly Tran discusses a Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District case in which an appellant cited fictitious caselaw generated by AI.  

In Kruse v. Karlen, the court dismissed an appeal by a pro se litigant for numerous briefing deficiencies, including the submission of fictitious cases generated by AI. The court found 22 of the 24 cases the appellant cited were fictitious. 

“Of the 22 fictitious cases, many held fictitious names and quotations. Several others had potentially real case names, but did not stand for the propositions that they asserted,” Tran said. “The court described this phenomenon as being the product of algorithmic serendipity.”

The case is Kruse v. Karlen, No. ED111172, Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District (Mo. App. E.D. Feb. 13, 2024).